Diving Stations

by Edwyn Gray

  ‘Do you think we ought to get mixed up in it, sir?’ he asked doubtfully. ‘The launch is flying a Portuguese flag.’

  ‘I don’t care if it’s flying a pair of lace knickers, Number One, I’m not sitting by and watching an innocent fishing boat being shot up by a gang of trigger-happy Japs.’ He moved to the front of the bridge and leaned over the coaming. ‘Stand by, Mister Gunner. Open fire as soon as we’re within range. And let’s see some proper shooting this time!’

  As Hamilton turned away, he heard Morgan admonishing his crew in his sing-song Welsh accent. ‘You heard what the Skipper said, me boyos. You’re not using a powder puff to dust their bloody arses. I want you to hit those buggers where it hurts. And if you don’t, I’m going to get the three of you polishing the brass on that gun for the next six months!’

  ‘Range 1500, Chief! Height 2,000.’

  ‘Elevation 55!’

  ‘Fused for 2000.’

  ‘Breech open.... Load.'

  The man at the helm of the launch certainly knew how to handle a boat. As the aircraft dived to renew the attack, he cut speed for a few moments and then, having timed his action to the last second, banged open the throttles of the twin diesel units and turned sharply to starboard. The pilot of the leading aircraft zoomed low across the bows, but the sudden alteration in course had spoilt his aim and he made no attempt to release the bombs. The second aircraft, following on his tail, tilted over on to its starboard wing in an effort to get in a quick burst with its machine guns. For a few seconds the silver fuselage was square in Rapier's sights.

  ‘Fire! Reload... Fire!’

  Morgan’s second order proved unnecessary. The first shell exploded just below the center of the bomber’s fuselage and the Mitsubishi folded in the middle like a piece of hinged cardboard. Flames burst out from behind the cockpit, the body snapped into two separate pieces, and the burning remains of the aircraft fell into the sea with a hissing splash.

  ‘Good shooting, lads. Keep it up!’

  Mannon said nothing. It had been a brilliant piece of gunnery and he didn’t begrudge Hamilton’s praise. But he could not help wondering how the hell the skipper was going to explain the destruction of a neutral aircraft to the powers-that-be at Hong Kong. A shout from Hamilton interrupted his thoughts.

  ‘Number One! Tell Murray to radio HK for a rescue boat. And inform them we need air support.’

  You’ll be lucky, Mannon told himself, as he made his way to the voice pipe. He could well imagine the effect of Hamilton’s signal at Naval HQ in Hong Kong. It was probably just the pretext the Japanese were waiting for to invade the Colony. The reply, he decided, would be an official raspberry - or worse. Lifting the lid of the speaking tube, he relayed the skipper’s orders to the control room.

  Rapier was less than a hundred yards away from the launch, as the two remaining aircraft came in with guns blazing to avenge the loss of their comrade. The sharp crackle of cannon fire echoed across the empty sea and the men on the submarine’s bridge ducked instinctively But the Japanese pilots were no longer interested in the British warship. This time they wanted an easy victim that couldn’t hit back. There was a sudden explosion, followed by a loud whoosh of flames as the cannon shells punctured the Chris Craft’s fuel tanks. Within seconds, the motor cruiser was in flames from stern to stern and Mannon stared aghast at the awful spectacle.

  ‘Stop engines,’ Hamilton ordered calmly. ‘Steer to windward, Cox’n. Stand by fo’c’sle hands to pick up survivors.’

  Rapier's deck guns stopped firing and, as the rumble of the diesels faded away, Blood moved the wheel to starboard. The two bombers had quickly left the scene and vanished into the blue void of the sky. The eerie almost unnatural silence was only broken by the soft slap of the sea against the hull plating, and the angry crackle of the fire as the submarine drifted downwind towards the burning launch.

  ‘Half-astern both!’

  The reversed thrust of the propellers brought the submarine to a standstill. Hamilton peered into the pall of black fumes obscuring the remains of the motor cruiser. The smoke and flames made it impossible to see clearly, but he could just make out a group of people huddled against the side of the wheelhouse. Why the hell didn’t they jump? Snatching up the microphone of Rapier’s loudhailer, he pushed the button and held the grille close to his mouth.

  ‘Abandon ship... we’ll pick you up.’

  The metallic tones of the disembodied voice had no effect. Protecting their faces from the flames the survivors cowered in terror, as if they were more frightened of the submarine than they were of the fiery furnace on which they were marooned.

  ‘Show ’em the Union Jack, Yeoman,’ Hamilton told Drury. ‘They think we’re bloody Japs.’ He moved to the front of the bridge. ‘Throw out some lines, Morgan.’

  ‘Won’t do no good, sir,’ the gunner shouted back. ‘If they’re Chinese they probably can’t swim. We’ll have to go in after them!’ Morgan had served on the China Station in the early thirties and knew what he was talking about.

  Hamilton dragged off his shoes, unbuttoned his shirt, and climbed up on to the narrow lip of the conning tower bridge screen.

  ‘Take over, Number One. The gunner is going to need a hand getting those poor devils off.’

  Mannon was given no time to protest. Hamilton balanced precariously on the lip of the coaming for a moment, and then plunged into the warm sluggish waters of the China Sea. Further forward on the foredeck plating, Morgan and two members of the gun crew followed the skipper’s example and joined him in the water. Less than twenty yards separated the two vessels and it only took a few strong strokes to bring them up alongside the burning launch.

  Hamilton felt the heat of the fire sear his face as he looked up and, treading water, he spat the sea from his mouth.

  ‘Jump!’ he yelled. ‘Jump - we’ll look after you.’

  The bewildered survivors on the launch hesitated. Then, as if the sea threatened a worse fate than the fire, one of them held his nose and plummeted down into the water with a mighty splash. Rapier’s gunner was alongside him almost immediately. A brawny arm encircled the man’s neck, dragging his face clear of the water so that he could breathe. Then, rolling over on his back, Morgan began towing the spluttering Chinaman towards the submarine.

  ‘Okay, sir, I’ve got him.’

  Encouraged by the speedy rescue of his companion the second man jumped, disappeared beneath the surface like a stone, and was quickly grabbed by Davidson as his head bobbed up again. Hamilton trod water and waited. The third and last figure, smaller and lighter than the others, stepped towards the rail, paused for a moment to look at the flames, and then dropped with thistle-down grace into the sea. Hamilton swam towards the floundering survivor and grabbed for a handhold. To his surprise his hands encountered the unexpected softness of a woman’s breasts and, without pausing to think what he was doing, his fingers instinctively closed over the twin mounds. The girl twisted away as she felt his hands on her body and, ignoring the dangers of drowning, she struggled to escape his grasp.

  Hamilton grabbed her shoulders, ducked her down violently under the water to discourage further resistance, and started to haul her back towards the waiting submarine. He wondered how he was going to explain this unfortunate reflex action when he got her aboard but decided, on balance, to ignore the incident. Perhaps she would believe it was an accident if he said nothing....

  A life line snaked down from the Rapier's bows and he grabbed it thankfully. Looping the rope under the girl’s arms, he fastened it into a noose and told the foredeck party to haul her in. He followed behind in an easy crawl and trod water while the seamen lifted her gently aboard the submarine. Then, grasping Mannon’s hand, he clambered up the slippery slope of the ballast tank and grabbed the clean towel Wilkinson was holding ready for him.

  The gunner’s mate reached the side of the submarine a moment later, with Davidson following not more than a stroke behind. Since both men were dragging a survivor,
they were carefully lifted up to the foredeck casing. Hamilton felt slightly relieved to see that the other two members of the motor cruiser’s crew were not women.

  ‘Get them below, Number One. And tell the Doc to check them over.’ He rubbed the towel rigorously over his head. ‘Better put the girl in the wardroom - no point in giving the men any unnecessary temptations.’ Glancing towards the bows, he saw that the girl had lost most of her clothing in the water. ‘And find something for her to wear or I might get tempted too!’

  Throwing the wet towel back to Wilkinson, Hamilton hauled himself up the bulkhead rings of the conning tower as the crew lowered the survivors down through the gun hatch. Swinging his leg over the coaming, he vaulted down and resumed his place on the narrow bridge. He looked around. The blue void of the sky was now empty of aircraft, and the smoldering remains of the motor cruiser rolled gently in the swell.

  His hands still tingled where they had touched the girl, and he stared down at the foredeck casing in silence, as he recalled the brief glimpse of her slim body sprawled nakedly on the steel deck plating. He was anxious to meet her again, but knew his eagerness must wait. There would be plenty of time to make her acquaintance when they reached Hong Kong. But, all the same, he could not help wondering what she had being doing aboard the launch.

  Dismissing the thoughts from his mind he walked to the binnacle to check the compass. The purple haze of Macao was faintly visible on the port horizon and the yawning mouth of the Pearl River lay ahead over the bows. It was sufficient to give him a rough and ready bearing.

  ‘Half-ahead, both, Chief. Steer zero-one-zero.’

  ‘Half-ahead both, sir. Course now zero-one-zero.’

  ‘Number One!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You look a bloody awful mess,’ Hamilton informed him dispassionately.

  Mannon did not dispute the observation. His once white shorts were streaked with green slime from the weed- encrusted ballast tank, and his face was grimed with cordite smoke. The skipper, he decided, looked even more of a scarecrow - although he had the tact to keep his opinion to himself.

  ‘Do you want me to change, sir?’

  Hamilton grinned. He was shirtless and shoeless and his shorts were tom and sodden with sea water. His arms were covered with superficial cuts where the razor-edged barnacles adhering to Rapier’s ballast tanks had ripped his flesh. And blood still trickled from his nose where the girl had butted him in the face during the brief struggle in the water.

  ‘To hell with being tiddley, Number One. Let’s show Hong Kong what a real fighting ship looks like. Damn the paintwork and the polished brass. It’ll give the buggers something to talk about while they’re putting on their starched shirts and getting ready for dinner tonight. And I hope it gives ’em indigestion.’

  Two

  Despite the cooling draught from the deck head fans the cabin was oppressively hot, and Hamilton could feel the sweat trickling down his face as he stood stiffly to attention in front of the Deputy Chief of Staff. Not even the row of opened scuttles in the bulkhead behind the deck brought any relief to the airless atmosphere, and Rapier’s commander looked hopefully at the enticing line of bottles on the captain’s sideboard. He ruefully reflected that his flamboyant attempt to impress the Hong Kong garrison had been a dismal failure.

  Rapier had attracted the usual crowd of onlookers as she entered Victoria Harbor from the direction of Stonecutters Island. But apparently blind to the battle-torn ensign and bullet-scarred paintwork, the citizens of the Colony had quickly lost interest in the new arrival, and the piers fronting Connaught Road were deserted by the time the submarine nosed its bows towards the dockyard. Even a narrowly averted collision with a passing cargo junk had failed to bring forth the anticipated rebuke from the harbormaster. If was as if Rapier was an unwelcome visitor - a harbinger of bad tidings or a carrier of plague - and Hamilton’s justifiable pride in his ship and his men was ruffled by the chill of their reception.

  Only the Port War Signal Station showed any interest in the submarine’s arrival. A searchlight flashed berthing instructions which, as soon as acknowledged, were followed by a curt Imperative and Personal for the Captain to report to HMS Tamar once his boat had been brought safely to her moorings between the destroyers Thracian and Thanet.

  Tamar, as Hamilton soon discovered, was no more than an engineless hulk, fitted with additional deckhouses to serve as HQ and receiving ship for the Hong Kong Station. In 1882 she had taken part in the bombardment of Alexandria, but now she was a mere shadow of her former glory - a relic of a bygone age when Britannia had truly ruled the waves. Arriving at the gangway, he presented his papers to the marine secretary on duty and was then escorted to a small cabin near the stern, which served as the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff.

  Captain Reginald Snark, another relic of the past who had served as a junior gunnery officer on the battle cruiser Lion at Jutland, looked up as Hamilton entered. He then promptly lost interest in his visitor and busied himself with a store’s list which he carefully marked off item by item. Rapier’s commander knew it was all part of the treatment - a device to cut him down to size by demonstrating his insignificance in the august presence of a post-captain. He had suffered similar indignities before and he waited patiently. Snark ticked the last entry on the list, scrawled his initials dutifully in the left-hand margin and blotted the ink pedantically, before putting the document into his out tray. Then leaning back in his chair and placing his fingers together under his chin in the best judicial manner, he surveyed the young submariner with cold blue eyes.

  ‘You’ve got off to a bad start, Lieutenant Hamilton,’ he said curtly and without the usual polite preliminaries.

  Hamilton said nothing. It seemed ridiculous to make so much fuss about Rapier's near-miss with the junk on entering the harbor. But it was the sort of triviality in which senior officers delighted during peacetime, when they had nothing more important to think about. It was a pity, he decided, that Snark couldn’t be posted back to Europe to discover the grim realities of a shooting war.

  ‘You will, of course, have to apologize,’ the captain continued. ‘Providing, that is, the Governor is able to avoid more serious repercussions.’

  Hamilton wondered what he was babbling about. Why the hell should the governor give a damn about a minor collision between one of His Majesty’s ships and an old trading junk that had seen better days. And ‘more serious repercussions’? No doubt some wily Chinese merchant was making an exorbitant claim for damages - putting on the squeeze as they called it in the Orient.

  ‘I don’t think you need worry too much, sir,’ he said easily. ‘I remember running down a Grimsby trawler just before the war. We invited the skipper to the wardroom for a drink, gave him a carton of best Scotch, and he went away as happy as a sandboy.’ Hamilton smiled at the memory.

  ‘Are you completely out of your mind, Lieutenant?’ Snark snapped. ‘This is a serious matter - an international incident of the first magnitude.’

  Oh for God’s sake, Hamilton groaned, inwardly. If this was the attitude of the Colonial authorities, no wonder the Empire was going down the drain. The owner of the offending junk needed a good boot up the backside for sailing too close to the naval anchorage in any case.

  ‘Naturally, I will apologize if the Governor wishes me to,’ he agreed diplomatically. ‘But it seems an awful lot of fuss to make over one damned junk.’

  Captain Snark frowned. ‘Junk? I do not understand, Lieutenant. I am referring to your ship shooting down a Japanese aircraft.’

  ‘Well I certainly don’t intend to apologize for that,' Hamilton snapped back.

  Snark stood up suddenly, his face white with anger. ‘You forget where you are, Lieutenant,’ he said coldly. ‘I do not tolerate insolence. You can make your excuses to the C-in-C in due course but, firstly, on the express orders of the Governor you will apologize to Commander Aritsu.’

  ‘For defending my ship from hostile attack?’ Hamilt
on found it difficult to believe his ears. What the hell was the Royal Navy coming to? ‘With your permission sir, I would like to see the C-in-C immediately. I have no intention of apologizing to those murdering bastards. And,’ he added tartly, ‘I take my orders from the C-in-C not a civilian official.’

  Snark chose to ignore the defiant challenge in Hamilton’s final statement. ‘Commander Aritsu does not see your action in that light. His complaint to the Governor indicates that your submarine deliberately opened fire on three Japanese aircraft without provocation.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I might add, for your information, Lieutenant, that the authorities here had been expecting some hotheaded young incompetent to do something stupid like this. And the Japanese have been waiting for such an excuse to give them the pretext for marching in and occupying the entire Colony.’

  ‘Well, Commander Aritsu has got it all wrong,’ Hamilton retorted curtly. ‘Rapier did not open fire until the aircraft had actually dropped their bombs - and we made every effort to establish our identity and avoid an incident.’ He swallowed his anger with difficulty. ‘Am I to understand, sir, that it is now an offence for a British officer to defend his ship in the face of an enemy attack?’

  ‘In certain circumstances that could well be the case, Lieutenant,’ Snark told him firmly. ‘You must remember that Britain is not at war with Japan, and it is the government’s earnest desire to avoid a confrontation in the Far East when our resources at home are stretched to the limit. The situation in China requires great tact and diplomacy - it is a tinder-box that requires only one small match to send the whole of South-East Asia up in flames. The C-in-C will acquaint you with the position when you see him.’

  Despite outward appearances, Snark had also been a fighter in the past and he had a certain amount of sympathy for Hamilton. But, no matter how unpalatable they might be, orders were orders. He allowed himself a frosty smile, ‘I can understand your bewilderment, Lieutenant. Coming from the war zone, this sort of thing must seem very strange. And, believe me, I don’t like it any more than you do. But we are in the hands of the diplomats. We have our specific instructions and they must be carried out. The Governor has arranged for you to see Commander Aritsu tomorrow morning. Take my advice. Go across to the club, have a few drinks, and cool off. Your new colleagues will be happy to fill you in on the peculiarities of service on the China Station. And I have no doubt that you are more likely to listen to them than you are to me.’