by Edwyn Gray
Mannon leaned over the conning tower coaming. ‘Sea Duty men below! Secure for’ard hatch.’
He waited for Morgan to dismiss the men on the fo’c’sle and then flipped the lid of the voice-pipe. ‘Take over lower steering. Course 1-7-5.’
‘Control Room, aye, aye, sir. On lower steering. Course 1-7-5.’
‘On lower steering, sir.’ He reported to Hamilton. ‘Fore hatch shut and clipped. Hands fallen out to passage routine.’
Hamilton acknowledged Mannon’s report with a nod and stared east as the peaks of Victoria Island shimmered in the heat haze. Despite the approach of winter the weather was unreasonably warm. Day temperatures should have dropped to a mean seventy degrees by now but when Rapier had left the Colony was still sweltering in a humid eighty-three. The latest Met report was forecasting an approaching cold front later in the day, but Hamilton had very little faith in the weather experts with their little charts and multi-colored inks. The China Seas were notoriously treacherous. Sudden squalls could appear from nowhere and vanish as quickly as they had come; and miniature storms of surprising ferocity could shut down visibility and lash a ship with gale-driven rain out of an almost clear blue sky. Rapier was lucky that the typhoon season was over.
‘Stand by to dive, Number One. Diving in two minutes.’ Mannon passed the preliminary order to the control room and waited while the duty signalman and the two look-outs swung into the upper hatch and clambered down the steel ladder.
‘Bridge clear, sir. Ready to dive.’
‘Thank you, Number One. Get below and stand by.’ Diving on the klaxon was restricted to emergencies and the submarine service did not officially acknowledge the term ‘crash dive’. Hamilton was in no hurry. The men had had more than their share of emergency dives during their last spell of duty in the Med. He had little doubt that diving on the klaxon would become part of their standard routine again in the very near future but, for the moment, he was content to let the crew take it easy. He moved to the voice pipe.
‘Take her down to periscope depth, Number One.’
‘Periscope depth aye aye, sir.’
Hamilton heard the metallic clang of the vents thrusting open as the hydraulic power came on, followed by the thundering roar of the sea flooding into the empty ballast tanks. Abaft, in the engine room, Chief ERA Bates acknowledged the order from the control room and passed the executive command to the motor room.
‘Out clutches - secure for diving.’
‘Clutches out, Chief.’ Yarden confirmed. ‘Engines stopped.’
‘Switches on. Group up - half-ahead both.’ The urgent throb of the diesels faded away and Bates felt the deck plating vibrate as the motors came on. He reached for the telephone link to the control room. ‘Engines off, sir. Motors running. Clutches out and secured for diving.’ Hamilton closed the upper hatch, fastened the clips, and slid down into the brightly-lit nerve center of the submarine. The monotonous chant of the reports, orders, and acknowledgements echoed quietly inside the crowded apartment.
‘Upper hatch shut and clipped.’
‘Permission to close lower hatch, sir?’
‘Granted.’ Hamilton glanced at the big dials of the depth gauges facing the two coxswains. The red pointer needles fingered towards the twenty-feet calibration. ‘Level at thirty, Number One. Maintain course and speed.’
Petty Officer Arnold leaned back in his seat and watched the needle swing down. As it touched the thirty feet mark he reversed the big steel-rimmed diving wheel and brought the for’ard planes into the horizontal position. Rapier's bows levelled off as the submarine gently came out of the dive.
‘Fore ’planes amidships, sir!’
As Arnold made his report, Ernie Blood eased the controls of the aft hydroplanes and deliberately balanced the submarine’s buoyancy as he coaxed it to the required depth.
‘Aft ’planes amidships, sir. Thirty feet. Trimmed and level.’
‘Up periscope!’
Bush moved the telemotor pump controls of the periscope mechanism and the bronze column sighed up from the womb with a soft hiss. Pulling down the steering handles, Hamilton pushed his face into the rubber cup of the binocular eye-pieces and waited for the water to clear from the upper lens. After the soft glare of the tungsten lamps in the control room, the strong sunlight made him blink, but it was only a slight discomfort and it quickly passed. Swinging the ’scope through a full circle, he carried out a preliminary routine sweep of the surface to ensure that there was no shipping in the immediate vicinity of the submerged submarine and then, flicking the sky-search lever with his thumb, he tilted the big search lens upwards to scan the sky.
A few wisps of cirrus cloud hung over the southern horizon but the remainder of the sky was clear; although Hamilton noticed a strange bronze sheen to seaward that contrasted with the brilliant blue over Hong Kong itself. A small float-plane, probably a Fair Sea Fox, droned slowly towards the peaks of Victoria Island trailing a large drogue, and he watched a speckle of tiny brown splashes of smoke bursting around it as the Colony’s anti-aircraft defenses put in some much needed live ammunition practice.
Moving the lens a few degrees to port, he stared in the direction of the Ninepin Islands group and watched a large trading junk tacking northwards to round the eastern coast of the New Territories towards the Chinese mainland. Suddenly, and without warning, he snapped the steering handles upwards and stepped back.
‘Down periscope! Flood Q! Sixty feet. Attack team close up.’
The bronze column sank softly into the heavily greased well in the deck with a sigh of hydraulic power and Venables, the ‘outside’ ERA, quickly spun the valve wheel to open the vents to the quick-diving tank in the bows.
‘Planes to dive!’
Despite the unexpectedness of the commands, there was no panic. Arnold angled the bow planes into a steep dive and watched the depth gauge like a hawk, as Ernie Blood juggled with the aft hydroplane controls.
‘Faster!’ Hamilton snapped.
‘Full ahead both!’ Although Mannon was in the process of moving from his diving station alongside the skipper to his attack team position at the venting panel, he found time to pass the order back to the motor room and wait for the acknowledgement from the chief ERA. Rapier needed the extra thrust from her propellers to get her down to the required depth more quickly.
‘What’s the depth of water, Pilot?’ Hamilton asked Scott. The navigator left the torpedo director and glanced at the opened chart on the table.
‘Twenty fathoms, sir. Plenty of diving room.’
Hamilton nodded his head and waited.
‘Sixty feet, sir. Trimmed and level.’
Having made his report, Ernie Blood eased his large bottom into a more comfortable position on the narrow unpadded seat. As a veteran submariner, he was accustomed to emergencies and he sat phlegmatically behind the diving wheel, sucking his teeth thoughtfully, ready for the next order. Despite his outward calm, however, he could not help wondering about the reason for the skipper’s sudden decision to take the Rapier deeper. Probably something he had spotted on the surface. Well, he knew best. The coxswain’s confidence in Hamilton’s skill was completely unshakable. But, like every other member of the submarine’s crew, he had no idea what might be happening in the bright sunlit world above the surface of the sea. Only the captain was privy to the secrets of the periscope’s lens. And in an emergency he was too busy to explain his actions to a group of curious matelots.
Hamilton looked at his stopwatch and checked that the attack team was closed up in the correct stations - Mannon behind the ‘outside’ ERA watching the trim and indicator lights of the blowing panel. O’Brien ready to mark up the plot, Scott at the ‘fruit machine’ and the two electrical artificers, Blake and Sutton, ranged alongside the periscope, ready to read off the angles and make the slide-rule calculations for the navigator to feed into the torpedo director.
The expressions on the faces of the attack team reflected the tension of the sudden emerge
ncy, but they stood at their stations with the easy casualness of men who knew what they were doing. Hamilton said nothing and reached for the telephone to the fore-ends compartment.
‘Bow tubes?’
‘Fore-ends, aye aye, sir.’
‘Action stations. Blow up tubes one, two, three and four.’
The chief torpedo gunner’s mate had served with Hamilton since the first day of the Rapier's commissioning. He knew his skipper and he knew exactly what was expected of him. Moving the lever of the telemotor controls from left to right, Newton waited for the needle of the pressure gauge to swing across the dial before glancing up at the mechanical indicators. The warning lights glowed as the tubes flooded up and Bruce, the sub lieutenant and fourth hand in charge of the bow compartment, nodded to Langton to check the test cocks. A trickle of water emerged from each end and the torpedo man passed a thumb’s-up signal back to the officer.
‘Bow caps open.’
Newton moved the lever on each tube and the sub lieutenant saw the markers of the mechanical indicators swing to the ‘open’ position. He put his mouth to the telephone.
‘Tubes flooded up, sir. Bow caps open. Standing by.’ ‘All received, Number Four. Standing by for firing.’ ‘Fore-ends aye aye, sir.’
‘Losing trim, sir! Bows dropping!’
Ernie Blood’s warning report was almost casual in its delivery. His voice gave no hint of alarm and Mannon, alerted by the warning, glanced at the inclometer for confirmation.
‘Blow One and Two compensating tanks.’
Venables reached forward across the panel and twisted the control valves of the bow compensating tanks. There was a sudden whine of compressed air as the water was transferred to the main ballast tanks under pressure, and Mannon saw the artificial horizon of the inclometer tilt back to equilibrium.
‘Trimmed and level, sir.’
Hamilton frowned. Rapier shouldn’t have lost trim so easily. And the fact that the heaviness in the bow coincided with the flooding of the torpedo tubes suggested something amiss with the first officer’s trim calculations. Alternatively, the by-pass valves used to transfer water ballast to balance the extra weight of the flooded tubes were malfunctioning. Either way something was wrong, and he made a mental note to check as soon as time permitted.
‘Any Asdic contacts, Glover?’
‘No, sir.’
‘HE?’
‘Negative.’
‘Take her up to periscope depth, Number One.’
‘Planes to rise - level at thirty. Blow Q!’
‘Thirty and level, sir.’
‘Up periscope!’
The big search ’scope rose up from the deck and Hamilton swung the column onto a north-east bearing. He focused the lens on the trading junk he had seen before their emergency dive and then, with pointedly unhurried calm, he swept the horizon through a full circle.
‘Down periscope. Attack team fall out.’ He reached for the telephone. ‘Bow ends - secure from Action Stations. Close bow caps and blow tubes.’ Putting the telephone back on its cradle, he lifted the microphone of the internal tannoy system. ‘This is the Captain. All hands stand down to Watch Diving routine.’
Mannon carried out a final check on the glowing warning lights of the main venting panel before turning to Hamilton. The tension of the unexpected emergency still showed in his face, but he managed to conjure up a grin.
‘Panic over, sir?’ he enquired cheerfully.
‘Just a drill, Number One. I wanted to make sure we hadn’t got stale after a few weeks enjoying the flesh-pots of Hong Kong.’ Hamilton glanced at the stopwatch hanging from a cord around his neck. ‘I suppose you didn’t do too badly - all things considered,’ he admitted grudgingly. Walking to the gyro-repeater, he stared at it in silence for a few moments. ‘Reduce to half speed. Steer zero-four-five.’ Finnegan brought the submarine on to its new course and centered the wheel as the gyro-repeater came on. ‘Half- ahead, sir. Course zero-four-five.’
Mannon knew that the alteration of the helm had pointed the submarine’s bows towards the Chinese mainland, and he could not help wondering what sort of plan Hamilton had in mind. Snark’s scheme had seemed wild enough when he first put it forward but, looked at afresh in the cold light of reality, it now seemed totally impossible. Boarding a destroyer - a submarine’s arch enemy - in its lair was an invitation to suicide. And Mannon did not feel very enthusiastic about dying young.
‘Bring your trim calculations to the wardroom, Number One,’ Hamilton told him sharply. ‘The bows shouldn’t have gone heavy when we flooded the tubes. There must be an error somewhere and I’d like to check your figures.’ Mannon was quite certain his calculations were correct, but Hamilton was probably wise to check, and he harbored no resentment. The answer probably lay in a malfunction of the ballast by-pass valves and, fortunately, that wasn’t his responsibility. Pulling down the file containing Rapier's, trim figures, he ducked through the for’ard bulkhead hatch to wait for the skipper in the wardroom.
Hamilton, meanwhile, had joined Scott at the chart table. He located Hai-An Bay without too much difficulty and circled it with his pencil.
‘What time is high water?’ he asked.
Scott checked the tables printed on the right-hand side of the chart and scribbled some figures on a scrap of paper.
‘About six o’clock, sir. It’s difficult to be precise. It’s not marked on the chart and these islands to the north could affect the tidal flow.’
‘Will we have enough water under the keel?’
‘Inside the bay - yes. But I’d reckon only six to seven fathoms over the bar at this time of the year at high water - and that’s a pretty risky gamble.’
Hamilton shrugged. ‘It’s my gamble, Pilot, not yours. But I can’t see an alternative. We’ve got to get inside the bay.’ He stared down at the various symbols printed on the chart and tried to picture what the scene would look like in reality. There were times when he wished he’d been blessed with a more vivid imagination. ‘I want to be half a mile off the bar at high water. Rapier will remain submerged through the approach - no point in revealing our presence before we have to. Let me have a course and speed.’
Scott picked up his dividers and made some quick calculations. The submarine was only twenty-five miles from the bay and it was not a difficult task to plot a suitable course. He only wished he could be more certain about the tide.
‘Course zero-three-nine, sir. Speed five knots, reducing to four for the last hour’s running.’
‘So be it, Pilot. Take over the watch while I check the trim figures with Roger. And call me when the plot shows we’re five minutes before high water.’
Four
‘Captain to the control room!’
Hamilton pushed the slide rule to one side and considered the results of his revised calculations. Despite his lack of experience Mannon’s trim figures were mathematically correct- which meant the drain valve to the bow tubes was malfunctioning. And that was a dockyard matter.
‘You’ll have to shift the ballast in the for’ard section, Number One,’ he told Mannon as he put his pencil away. ‘It’s only a temporary expedient, but I can’t have the bows sinking every time we flood up the tubes. And if we find ourselves in an emergency situation there won’t be time to start balancing the trim.’ He pushed the wardroom curtain aside and made his way aft.
Scott was waiting in the control room. He looked pleased with himself. Underwater navigation could be a damned unreliable game of chance but, on this particular occasion, luck had been on his side.
‘We’re directly off the bay, sir. Three minutes to high water.’
‘Well done, Pilot.’ Hamilton turned to Baker, who was sitting at the hydro-phone equipment in his miniscule cabinet at the rear of the control room. ‘Any HE, Baker?’
‘Nothing, sir. Apart from the surf under the cliffs.’
‘And the Asdic?’
Baker leaned across and twisted a large red knob. The steady pulse reveal
ed no answering echo. ‘No contacts, sir.’
‘Up periscope.’
Hamilton set the upper lens on to the bearing indicated by Scott and examined the narrow entrance to the bay. Steep tree-clad cliffs descended down to the sea on either side, and the bobbing orange colored floats of the boom were clearly visible on the surface. Not even the faintest breath of wind ruffled the waters of the bay, and the leaden sheen of the sky confirmed the storm warning he had received from the Fleet Met Officer on leaving Hong Kong. Hamilton was unable to decide whether bad weather was likely to be an advantage or a disadvantage. But one factor worried him. The forecast had shown the center of the storm as approaching from seaward and, like all experienced sailors, he had no desire to find himself trapped on a lee shore. Too many good ships had been lost that way.
‘Steer two points to starboard.’
The slight alteration of course brought Rapier into a position where he could see right inside the land-locked bay. The Japanese destroyer, purposeful and menacing in her dark grey war paint, was anchored close inshore on the right-hand side while, almost half a mile away to the left lay the white hulled gunboat - a wisp of smoke rising vertically from her buff colored funnel, her white ensign hanging limp and dejected in the still air. Nothing was happening. There was no sign of activity on either ship, no signals were passing and there was none of the usual small- boat traffic. Hamilton noted with relief, however, that the destroyer’s guns were safely pointing fore and aft and that was a reassuring sign.
‘Down periscope.’
Walking across to the chart table, Hamilton motioned Mannon and Scott to join him and, taking a clean sheet of paper, he drew a rough sketch of the bay and the position of the two warships. ‘I think our best place is inside the bay and alongside Firefly,' he told them. ‘But we’ll have to gamble on passing through the entrance without being spotted. If it’s an anti-submarine defense boom, we won’t stand a chance. But the floats look too light to support a steel net so I think we’ll be okay. Any questions?’