The Bonny Boy

by David Black

  Earlier, to keep everyone busy, Harry had ordered the torpedo tubes reloaded. It was that, and the fact they weren’t scuttling off to another hunting ground, that had started a buzz aboard. The mood had swung from despondency to tension; even Windass couldn’t concentrate enough to conjour up something tasty enough to take their minds off yesterday’s events. When Harry had asked what treat Windass was planning for dinner, Farrar’s response had been somewhat distracted. ‘He’s doing something to sausages,’ he’d said, forgetting even to say ‘Sir’, he was so wound up.

  Harry had said ‘ugh’, and after a brief look at the chart, had retired to his bunk. ‘If nothing happens, don’t wake me until ten minutes before first light,’ he said, and was gone behind his curtain.

  Everybody had fretted the night away.

  Once called, he had his coffee at the wardroom table while waiting for the watch to get the boat down, and take her into the Monte Carlo Harbour approaches. Then the time had come to raise the periscope, and what he’d seen had made him smile. Moored there, in the inner harbour, trotted up together against the far quay, had been the two merchantmen, looking enormous now in the confined box of the inner harbour.

  After he’d sent the periscope down, Harry began pouring over the chart and the gap between the jetty and the breakwater that almost overlapped, but didn’t, and the depth of water outside the harbour, and inside. He moved his parallel rulers through the gap in the harbour entrance, and drew his lines, and calculated the angles of error.

  The control room crew fidgeted and tapped, and snatched endless glances as their captain scratched his head and scribbled.

  Up went the periscope again, and Harry had the control room messenger start reading off all the bearings he was taking. Down again. Up again, and more bearings, and down again. He had McCready, who had the watch, mark them on the chart. ‘That’s the casino … that’s the oceanographic museum … the opera,’ he rattled of the list of landmarks.

  Then Harry had gone for’ard and taken the TGM, Gooch, from the PO’s mess with him. They had a detailed conversation in the torpedo room about depth settings and how to make sure they worked, then he made his way back to the control room.

  By this time the crew were besides themselves.

  As Harry came through the door again, he said, ‘Mr Farrar, Mr Harding, Mr Powell. The wardroom with me please, and Mr Harding, bring the chart.’

  At least two of the senior rates in the control room would’ve immediately, quietly, dispatched the messenger to eavesdrop if McCready hadn’t been watching them all.

  Harry spread Harding’s chart across the table. ‘Here’s the plan,’ he said. ‘Our targets from yesterday are indeed inside Monte Carlo Harbour. I intend to fire torpedoes at them from outside the breakwater.’

  There was a silence as his officers looked at Harry’s case before them, and it looked like no case at all.

  Eventually Harding said, ‘But the breakwater and the jetty overlap. It’s not a clear shot, sir.’

  ‘They don’t overlap if you fire at this angle,’ said Harry, and drew his finger along a thin pencil line he’d drawn from an “X” he’d marked 500 yards east of the entrance, skimming past the breakwater with microns to spare, and all the way down the harbour to the quay. ‘And that’s where the buggers are moored.’

  Everyone peered at it, and frowned. Harry was right. Just.

  ‘But the confined water, sir,’ said Powell, his torpedo officer, still frowning, ‘It’s not just a matter of pointing and firing, sir. Torpedoes need space, and depth, to settle on their run.’

  Harry again pointed to the chart. ‘The depth of water here is fifteen fathoms. Depth inside the harbour, according to this, is over twenty feet. If we fire from a couple of cables out, and set the depth at twelve feet, the torpedo should stabilise by the time it reaches the gap, and not go bouncing off the seabed or the harbour walls, should it not Mr Powell.’

  Powell, shrugged, and looked at his fellow officers. ‘There’s the gap, sir …’

  Yes, sir,’ said Harding. ‘The gap. What kind of angle is that to shoot through? It’s impossible.’

  Harry leaned into the passage and called, ‘Leading Seaman Cross to the wardroom!’

  Cross presented himself almost instantly, eyes bulging with excitement at what he might be being asked, and terror at what it was he might’ve done. He stood in the passage by the table forcing himself to stand at attention.

  ‘Our helmsman with the deft touch,’ said Harry to the table, with a flourish, then to Cross, ‘Hats off Red, you’re not in any trouble. Stand easy, and lean in and look at this.’

  Cross obeyed, ‘Sir,’ he said as he peered at Harry’s finger marking the tiny space between the breakwater and the jetty.

  ‘I’ve taken the bearings form every prominent building on the Monte Carlo skyline,’ said Harry to his officers now. ‘There is no tidal stream to speak of and no cross-currents so we don’t have to factor those in. So, if we can keep steady on three two one degrees, we have the shot.’ Then he turned to Cross. ‘You can do that for me, Red, can’t you?’

  Cross shot back up to attention, not knowing whether his heart was going to burst with pride that his captain had just called him by his lower deck nickname. ‘Aye, aye, sir!’

  ‘That’s it, Red. Deft touches. Just remember to lick your fingers first, and you’ll be fine,’ said Harry, grinning at him, and the young lad beaming back. ‘All this practise you’ll’ve been getting, young Fatima’s not going to know the difference between agony and ecstasy by the time you’ve finished with her. Carry on.’

  Lt Harding RN was grinning at Harry too. He’d realised at last, what it was he was seeing here, and he wanted to laugh out loud, but sometimes you could push it too far even with the most easy-going skippers. Mr Gilmour might only be Wavy-Navy, but sitting here, Harding was being forced to admit that he was Andrew through and through now – deffo through and through, whether the captain knew it himself or not – the way the word “Blackpool” runs through a stalk of rock. It was like recognising a fellow traveller.

  When he’d first sat down at this table, his initial thoughts had been that his captain was cracking up, that two fluffs in a row had sent him over the edge. But it wasn’t that at all. It was just pure old-fashioned Royal Navy bloody-mindedness. The kind you catch from three hundred years of unbroken fighting tradition and a code that runs on aggressive inventiveness in the face of adversity. Bloody good show, sir, Harding said to himself, let’s have bloody crack at the bastards anyway! And it felt good to know they were both agreed.

  Harry’s plan was to fire up to four torpedoes. He’d suspected anti-submarine nets across the harbour entrance so the first, hopefully, would shred them, and the rest … well he hoped torpedo two would bow the arse off the outside merchantman, that three would inflict fatal damage on the inboard ship, and four would add insult to injury for the whole mangled mess. Even if, collectively, all three only managed to demolish the outboard ship, that at least would bugger up trying to move the inside one while they tried to shift the wreck of its newly sunk neighbour.

  ****

  Scourge closed the harbour half an hour before sunset, the idea being that once they’d wreaked their havoc, they could use the night to escape on the surface faster.

  ‘Up periscope,’ said Harry, and he fastened himself to the attack periscope’s eyepiece. He made several quick sweeps of the Monte Carlo skyline, starting to glow pink in the evening sun, to fix his bearings on his selected fixed points.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, slowly, ‘coming up on our way point, helmsman … hold me on three two one … now.’

  ‘Coming on to three two one,’ Cross called back, ‘… now!’

  Every eye was on the compass repeater tape above Cross’s head at the fore end of the control room. The needle moved through “321”, and kept going until it was half way to “322”. Cross’s shoulders visibly tensed, the needle slid back, touching “321”, and held.

  �
�Three two one, steady!’ yelled Cross, a little too loudly.

  ‘Righty-ho,’ said Harry, ‘let’s kick the door down … Fire one!’

  There was the bump, and a feint hiss in the silence. Harding was looking at his watch, timing the run to where the nets should be.

  ‘I wish all these bloody people would eff off walking their bloody dogs,’ said Harry, to no-one, obviously looking beyond the target ships to evening life along the quay. ‘Oh God! A bloody woman with a pram!’

  Harding talked over him, ‘The torpedo … it should’ve hit any nets long before—’ then he too was interrupted.

  ‘No nets,’ said Harry, ‘… it’s going all the … whoa!’ said Harry, ‘A lovely great plume …’

  And a loud boom echoed in from the sea.

  ‘Oh, what a mess,’ said Harry. People next to him could see the profile of his grin. ‘Watch your heading, helmsman. Bring me back onto three two one.’

  The kick from blasting out the torpedo had shoved Scourge sideways, to 323 degrees. Cross corrected.

  ‘Helm back on three two one, steady,’ called Cross.

  ‘Fire two!’ said Harry, and Scourge went over the hump again. ‘Number One,’ said Harry, his face not moving from the periscope, ‘Your camera. Come and get this!’

  One step and Farrar reached for his treasured Leica from beneath the chart table. His next step took him to where Harry was standing aside, saying as he moved, ‘That made them shift …’ laughter in his voice, ‘… civvies running in all directions. All looking up. They think they’re being bombed!’

  Grins all round the control room.

  Boom! Another hit.

  ‘Check that dart!’ said the second cox’n in a stage whisper, ‘Double tops!’

  Farrar, grinning too, placed the camera lens carefully against the periscope eyepiece, and pressed the shutter. He took a good half dozen shots in rapid succession then pulled it away.

  Cross called Scourge was back on the heading, and Harry ordered, ‘Fire three!’ without looking.

  ‘Take a look yourself, Number One,’ he added. As Farrar stepped back to the periscope, Harry continued talking.

  ‘There were no nets,’ he said. ‘The first torpedo went straight up the harbour and hit outboard right under the aft Samson posts …’

  ‘Our second shot has just broken her back,’ said Farrar, still looking through the periscope. ‘And bang!’ And as he said it, the noise of the third torpedo hit could be heard in the control room. But Farrar’s commentary wasn’t finished, ‘At least secondary damage to inboard … her foremast has just come down.’

  Harry said, ‘Helmsman, let her fall off half a point.’

  ‘Three two zero and a half, steady,’ called Cross.

  ‘Fire four!’ said Harry.

  Every ear was straining for the next tell-tale bang. When it came, there was another right behind it – and this one was much louder. ‘Bloody hell!’ shouted Farrar, still transfixed by the scene. He held his camera to the lens again for a few more shots, before sticking his eyes back to the ’scope and resuming his commentary.

  ‘You’ve just blown at least ten feet off of inboard’s bows,’ he said. ‘The secondary explosion, I don’t know what it was, but we’ve got a pretty substantial blaze going now, aboard what looks like both ships.’ Then he traversed the periscope, left then right. ‘And you’ve just made yourself very unpopular with the mayor for what you’ve just done to his sea front. All the trees have been blown flat and I can’t see an intact window anywhere … or a balcony or stone balustrade that doesn’t look like the inside of PO Shearer’s gob’ – PO Shearer being notorious for having a mouthful of broken and missing teeth.

  Farrar stood back and beamed at Harry. ‘Captain Gilmour,’ he said, ‘the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, or at least made a hell of a mess of it!’

  Eighteen

  ‘So you got them in the end. I’m looking forward to the photographs,’ said the Bonny Boy, smiling benignly from his position of repose. ‘And I’m totally confident no-one is going to query that you took several goes, and ten torpedoes to do it. The targets were obviously worth it, the amount of escorts Jerry’d thrown around them, and sending them into Monte Carlo for an over-nighter to boot. So well done, young Mr Gilmour!’

  The Bonny Boy was lolling in the arms of a commodious floral easy chair that was embracing him like a grizzly bear, capless, in crisp white 3B dress, with his knobbly knees and pipe-cleaner legs poking out at impossible angles. And he was positively exuding bonhomie. A large gin and bitters stood on a table at his side.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Harry, sitting half way across the cabin, perched on a higher chair, the one used by visitors when sitting opposite the Bonny Boy behind his desk. Even though Harry was sat higher than his Captain (S), the whole arrangement was making him feel vaguely uncomfortable; instead of feeling he was towering above, it was more like being on a gallows. He took a gulp of his own gin and bitters.

  Scourge had returned to Algiers earlier that morning, all torpedoes gone and her Jolly Roger sporting one new red and three new white bars – the red being for the UJ during the first attack on the two-ship convoy, and two of the whites for eventually bagging the ships in Monte Carlo. After that attack, Harry had scooted all the way back along the coast, as far as possible from the scene of his crime, and got the third – a small coaster – off Toulon.

  The Scourges had been feeling pretty good about themselves when they came alongside Ellan Vannin, but there’d been no Captain (S) to greet them, just Sam Bridger and the flotilla second engineer to check their snag list.

  Harry had completed his paperwork with Cdr Bridger then left the boat to Farrar and had gone off to Ellan Vannin’s wardroom where he’d spent most of the rest of the morning steeping in one of the baths there, only his nose above the hot, soapy water, and his brain an immaculate blank. Just before lunch, Captain Bonalleck had summoned Harry for his post patrol de-brief. By that time, the Bonny Boy had obviously read, closely, Harry’s patrol report, but now all he was doing was commending him. Harry had been expecting questions, which was normal: a few, “why did you do thats?”, “why didn’t you do this?”, the odd, “what lessons did you learn?”, and the inevitable, “… about this commendations’ list?” Everybody queried commendations’ lists. And Harry had written citations for several of his crew, especially LS “Red” Cross for his ‘steadiness under fire’. But nothing.

  ‘I’ve had Sam cut orders for the first two of your watches for the rest camp,’ said the Bonny Boy, eventually, still smiling. ‘Once you’ve squared away your boat, they can jump in the trucks and head down the coast. Then you can spell them with your duty crew as you see fit. A proper little resort it is, or so I’ve heard. Right on the beach, with its own outdoor cinema and lots of beer.’

  They obviously did things differently in Algiers compared to Lazaretto; on Malta when you came in, everybody was down the gangway and off to the nearest grog shop. They’d had submariners’ rest camps in the beginning on Malta, but what with no petrol for the trucks to get there, and 109s swarming all over the shop nearly every daylight hour, they’d tended to fall into disuse.

  Here in Algiers there were, apparently, rest camps, but before the crews were allowed to get there, it seems there were duties to perform. Each boat, for example, was expected to present as soon as possible after arrival, a detailed snagging report, spares’ lists, stores lists and requisitions for replacement torpedoes and ammunition; then the crew had to scrub out their boat, leaving her all sparkly and clean for the maintenance crews to come on board and trash. Oh, and one of the three watches had to remain on board – no spare crew to take over. Any leave would then be rota-ed with the other two.

  What was there to say – if you couldn’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined. But it was nice – Harry couldn’t think of a better word – for the Captain (S) to have already planned his crew’s rest camp visit. He certainly couldn’t have been more jovial.

>   Harry had been still thinking about his meeting with the Bonny Boy as he walked along the mole to Eighth Flotilla’s HMS Maidstone, a big, 9000-ton, specially designed depot ship barely five years old, moored alongside all naval-fashion and meaning business amid all the dockyard clamour. He’d been told Twelfth Flotilla’s officers were permitted to use her wardroom for meals, their own little conversion job having no space for gentlemen’s luxuries.

  What was he to make of the Bonny Boy? All the smiles he’d just been treated to, the drink thrust into Harry’s hand, the warm compliments – all held against their history. That look Bonalleck had given him after Pelorus had gone down, of unalloyed malice that had burned itself into Harry’s memory. But now it wasn’t even mentioned. Just as the hi-jacking of his last patrol report, and the “dissatisfaction” Bonalleck had appended to it, hadn’t been mentioned. How did that square up with the conversation he’d just had? Harry knew he’d never been any good at fathoming the Machiavellian stuff. It made his head hurt, and his heart too. If Bonalleck wanted to be a bastard towards him, why didn’t he just get on with it. He had all the power after all.

  To take his mind off the whole mess, he began thinking about kit. He had none. It was all still back at Lazaretto. No respectable going-ashore uniform, and his only white shirt he’d hung up after visiting the Captain (S). Right now he was forced to be walking about in a light denim work shirt with epaulettes to show rank, a pair of PT shorts and plimsolls on his feet sans socks – all of it as yet un-dhobyed after the patrol. And his cap, of course, with its white top on as a nod to respectability, scrunched as usual on the back of his head. It was about time he was indenting for some new threads. He’d pop into Ellan Vannin’s slop shop to tide him over when he got back.