by David Black
Nobody had been up in these waters for two years. So at least, he had supposed, no-one is going to be expecting us. When Harry had told Sam Bridger where they were off to, he’d frowned, but said nothing.
Then, according to plan, the alert signal had arrived 48 hours ago.
“OnPass signal Flag Officer, Gibraltar. Bulk carrier, Polstjärna, dep: Valencia 10.30 hrs, on 3rd. Dest. Marseilles. Confirm blockade runner. Engage. Swedish flagged. ID marks – ‘Svensk’ painted large below bridge. Captain S 12.”
It was the Bonny Boy, passing on a signal from Gib. They had identified a runner, pretending to be a safe-conduct ship. Claiming its destination as Marseilles was the giveaway – only a safe-conduct ship would risk a surface run to Marseilles with all British subs about up on that coast – and obviously there was no safe-conduct ship expected. So the Polstjärna was a runner and was coming his way, sailing under a neutral Swedish flag with the word “Svensk” painted in large letters along her hull like a talisman to ward off torpedoes.
The implications of the Bonny Boy’s signal were obvious: he was to sink her because, neutral or not, she was carrying contraband into an enemy-controlled port.
In response to the signal, he’d conned Scourge into the area marked “minefield” on the chart at periscope depth in the middle of the afternoon, and they’d barely gone quarter of mile when the gut-dropping sound of a mine cable could be heard scraping down their port side. Stop together; slow astern together; change nappies.
Later, he’d watched the Polstjärna hove into view through the periscope, her well-decks practically awash so heavy was she laden. And then she’d slowed down and turned into Port Vendres, as he knew she would. Home free. Another successful blockade run.
That night he’d come up with the idea. It had come to him watching Windass cram gash into a big catering tin, at least a foot in diameter, ready to lob it over the side, along with the other pails-full.
‘What the hell is that,’ he’d asked the cook.
‘That was yer peas, sir.’
Harry had studied it. ‘How many more tins like this have you got?
‘Wot? Tins of peas, like, sir’
‘Of anything, Windass?’
‘Couple a dozen, sir.’
‘Empty me five more … Braithwaite! Pass the word for Mr Braithwaite!’
And when Braithwaite had arrived in the wardroom, Harry had said, ‘I’ve only one word to say to you, Braithwaite. Paravanes.’
While Scourge had been alongside in Algiers, several boats had been taken in hand by the depot ships and had been having new equipment fitted, namely a sort of forward-looking echo sounder called an MDU, or Mine Detection Unit. Harry had heard of them before in the Lazaretto wardroom, from Ben Bryant, who’d tried them out on a patrol to the Adriatic.
‘I switched the damn thing off after ten hours,’ he’d said. ‘It kept telling me there were mines everywhere, thicker than a shoal of sardines. Nobody knew how to work it properly. It was a bloody menace.’
So Harry hadn’t been too worried that the Bonny Boy hadn’t thought to give him a set before sending him into a minefield. But this idea he’d just had for dodging mines, might just work. He’d got everybody round the wardroom table with paper and pencils.
Paravanes were torpedo-shaped floats with fins, with a wire shackled to them. Minesweepers towed them so that the fins would push them out and away from their hulls, and let the wires in between catch on any mine cable they might passing; and either cut it, or slew it out to snag on the paravane where it could be grabbed or harmlessly detonated.
Harry had Braithwaite weld two sets of four catering tins together, and then weld on fins and a shackle. The problems, however, had been clewing together long enough lengths of mooring spring to substitute for a wire, and how to hold the springs at a sufficient depth to catch any mine cable, because all mines were laid secured just below the surface, all the better not to be spotted by observant lookouts, and to ensure their explosions holed their target ships beneath the waterline.
‘Sir, how about if we trim down on number one main ballast tank and then took the inspection plate off; we could pass the wire down through the tank and out of the free flood hole, ’ Braithwaite had suggested. ‘That would hold the springs at sufficient depth.’
Ainsworth had been too long at sea to think even for a moment this gimcrack lash-up would ever work, but he was pleased to see young Braithwaite be so willing.
‘Good man, Braithwaite,’ Harry had said. But then the skipper was always willing.
The stoker in the Davis set was underneath Scourge’s hull right now, drawing out the springs through the free flood hole and getting ready to bring them up for attachment to Braithwaite’s improvised paravanes.
When they were fitted, they’d head off into the minefield. Harry had spent the day getting fixes on various peaks in the distant Pyrenees as well as buildings in Port Vendres. There’d be no trouble confirming the bearings to the mountains in this light, so he knew exactly where they were starting from. All they had to do was sweep their own channel through the field, cutting any mines they found and freeing them into the current, so not only would they be able to cut a way in, but they’d have a way back out again.
Harding stuck his head up through the conning tower hatch, ‘Biddle has feint HE approaching from the south, sir.’
Harry dropped down the hatch, and stepped into Biddle’s cubby.
‘It’s a ship, sir,’ he said. ‘Quite a way away, but she’s coming up pretty fast.’
Harry listened on the second headphones. Then he went to the chart.
‘No signal from Captain (S),’ he said to Harding, looking into Spanish waters, and at the depressing width of the minefield on the French side. ‘So he’s not expecting anyone.’
As they were mulling, there was a sudden yell from the bridge, ‘Lights on the horizon! Bearing zero seven eight!’
The ship they were listening to, coming up from the south, lit up like a Christmas tree as Harry and Harding observed once they’d made it upstairs.
Harding leaned over the bridge front and told Farrar what they’d spotted, and not just out of the spirit of communication. The implication being that if the number one got a move on, they might just get through the minefield in time and get a shot at this bugger before it made it in to Port Vendres.
But Harry was watching the ship through his binoculars; even with his crap night vision, he couldn’t miss much in the moonlight, especially not a lit ship.
‘No panic, Number One,’ he said at Harding’s side. ‘She’s coming on like the clappers. We’ll never get up to her in time for a shot. The next one. We’ll get the next one. So take your time down there and get it right.’
He went back to watching, but just after Farrar had called up they were about ready to start streaming, he noticed the lit ship had run well past where the Polstjärna had started slow. He called Harding’s attention to it.
After a while following her through his own binoculars, Harding said, ‘Bloody hell, sir. You’re right. He’s barrelling on through!’
Harry leaned over the bridge, ‘Mr Farrar! Belay! Secure all the paravane gear. Clear the casing, get everything below!’ And then he shot down the hatch, telling Harding to follow.
He pulled the chart to him on the table.
‘I don’t know what you thought, Mr Harding, but I reckon she’s doing fifteen knots,’ he said, setting dividers against the speed converter. He marched them along the coast, inside the minefield, following its dog-legs inshore and then out again.
‘Fifteen, I concur,’ said Harding. ‘Faster than we could chase her on the surface.’
Harry then re-calibrated the dividers and marched them in a direct line from Scourge’s current position to the northern end of the minefield. ‘But we could beat her to here, and be waiting for her,’ he said.
Peering over Harry’s shoulder and grinning, Harding said, ‘We could indeed, sir.’
‘And she’s a bi
g bastard,’ said Harry. ‘Eight, nine thousand tons.’
‘She is indeed, sir,’ said Harding now grinning, madly.
They ran north for two hours, Harry on the bridge, willing Scourge on through the night, and always to port, the brightly lit floating showground that was their quarry. It was all McCready, who was on the bridge with him as watch officer could do to keep his binoculars away from it. Every now and then he’d come up with a further snippet on the target, as their courses slowly converged.
‘She’s got a big flag painted on her side … a tricolour of some sort … probably be Spanish red, gold and red … and “ESPAGNOL” painted in huge white letters … she’s really laying it on thick.’
Pretending to be a safe-conduct ship.
Farrar came up to join him, lugging the TBT – the target bearing transmitter. Their attack, when it went in, would be a surface attack.
‘Sir, said Farrar, helping a rating with him slot the device in place, ‘Braithwaite’s just said something to me.’
‘What, Number One?’ Harry was studying the ship now too.
‘About safe-conduct ships, sir.’
‘What about them?’ said Harry, turning now, to listen properly.
‘He’s been further up this coast on his last boat. He says they’re not as rare an occurrence as you might think. Gib keeps tabs on them. But it doesn’t broadcast its warnings to Tom, Dick and Harry. Just to the flotillas for on-pass to boats in the area. He’s been listening to what’s been going on. Being a wrecker, in the control room all the time, there’s not much he’s going to miss, I suppose.’
‘What’s your point, Number One? Or more to the point, what’s Braithwaite’s?’
‘We should be careful, sir. Make sure who it is we’re about to sink.’
‘What would you have me do, Number One, thank Braithwaite for his concern?’
The instant he’d said it, Harry regretted it. ‘I’m sorry, Number One. I shouldn’t have said that. Get Braithwaite, find out exactly how this bloody pass nonsense works and see if there’s a way we can double check. And do it fast, Nick, we’re almost on this bastard. Carry on.’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’ And he was gone. As Harry watched him go he couldn’t help but think that this was the bloody Med after all. And everybody knew what the atmospherics were like. A signal could be missed.
Tubes 1 to 6 were ready, torpedo running depths set to 12 feet. Harding was on the bridge with him, to operate the TBT, and McCready was down on the main fruit machine. Harry had conned Scourge across the target’s bows as she came up. He intended to begin his attack from the land side lest any eagle-eyed lookout might spot them against the reflection of the partial moon, not that there was really much chance of that with all the lights on her blazing away.
Which was, of course, exactly how a safe-conduct ship was meant to proceed – all navigation lights fully illuminated and the superstructure floodlit. Harry had to hand it to them, they were playing the role for all it was worth.
The ship was closing fast on their starboard bow and Harry was waiting for the numbers that would seal this ship’s fate.
Harding started calling, ‘Enemy course zero one zero, speed fourteen knots!’
‘Port thirty. Steer zero six zero,’ called Harry.
Track angle was called; then the range, 1200 yards; then Harry called for the DA from the fruit machine, and McCready’s voice came up the pipe, ‘DA is green one eight!’
Farrar had suddenly appeared on the bridge.
‘Sir!’ he was frantically hissing in Harry’s ear. ‘You need to read this now, sir. Right now!’
Harry was ready to be angry until he saw Farrar’s face. He was being offered a pink signal flimsy – a scrap of paper from the pile of past signals decoded, but filed because not marked “Attention: Scourge”.
It read: “Flag Officer Gibraltar to Captain S 12. Safe-conduct ship MV Chiapas sailed Barcelona 19.30, 6th, dest: Marseilles. No offensive action – repeat, no offensive action is to be taken against this ship …”
There were description details, nationality; at a glance he could see they matched, but he didn’t read any further.
‘Stop the attack!’ yelled Harry, so loud Harding banged his chin on the TBT.
Later, Harry sat at the wardroom table. He’d ordered Scourge directly out to sea, running at 13 knots in a straight line past the stern of the MV Chiapas and on into the darkness. The boat was at 60 feet now, her crew sipping the extra tot he’d ordered, all them now aware of Scourge’s narrow escape from causing a major international incident and bringing down on herself and the entire service a whole bucketsful of international condemnation.
As a result, the crew were in a reflective mood. For among the other consequences that would have inevitably ensued from sinking a Red Cross ship sailing under a British diplomatic safe conduct order, one of them was that they would almost certainly lose their skipper, and although this one was obviously still just a daft lad in many ways, in other, really important ways, he was a “good ‘un”, and not many of them came along. Ever. So nobody aboard Scourge had wanted that.
Harry just had coffee in front of him, and wasn’t paying attention to Farrar who kept sticking his head round the control room door, to check on him.
‘All right. It was a close shave,’ Harding was whispering in Farrar’s other ear, ‘but hey, its not as if we actually sank the bugger. Isn’t he making a bit of a meal of this?’
Farrar, brow furrowed turned back to him. ‘I don’t know what it is, but it’s something else that’s bothering him,’ he said. And he was right.
Harry was trying to come to terms with what had really just happened.
And he was finding it hard to believe. If he’d been in any doubt that Captain Bonalleck had it in for him, all that was gone now. The smiles, and the praise? Just so much bloody flannel. What else could it have been? So the Bonny Boy didn’t like him. He could live with that. There was no law that said people had to like him. But what was going on here was more than that. Much more. The facts screamed it; he felt it in his guts too; what Bonalleck had just tried to do to him, and to his boat.
Harry went back over everything in his mind: the signal from C-in-C ordering renewed operations into Franco-Spanish coastal waters. What signal? He never showed Harry any signal, nor wrote out any order for him. The frown on Cdr Bridger’s face suggested he hadn’t known anything about it either. All that guff about the minefield. The Marine Nationale commits a destroyer flotilla and stepped-up air cover, and then just lets its main line of defence – its minefield – just drift away on current and storm? That didn’t make sense.
Then there was the comprehensive system of tagging and alerting the passage of safe-conduct ships that Harry had never heard of. That nobody was supposed to have heard of until actually alerted. And this one time it doesn’t work. Bonalleck is sent the signal all right, but doesn’t onpass. Yet he’d onpassed the other signals – the ones designed to encourage Scourge to risk the minefield.
Harry was struggling to bring himself to believe it. He could not conceive the rage, the fury that must be in the man, the madness, if it were true, for him to have done such a thing. What had it taken to drive Bonalleck to do what Harry, stunned, was trying to comprehend?
He didn’t just dislike him: it was hatred. But even then …
To deliberately order one of His Majesty’s submarines into a known enemy minefield, one that you know is guarded by surface ships and aircraft, and you lie about it, just because you “hate” her skipper; to be calmly prepared to sacrifice that boat and her entire crew …
And then if that didn’t work, then to connive to sacrifice the good name of the Service, just to destroy the reputation of a lowly lieutenant, just because he called you a drunk and a disgrace … deliberately withholding signals, misleading him and encouraging him to attack a safe-conduct ship carrying medicines and comfort for your own POWs. The cold cunning, the planning, the pathological need that must be gnawing at the m
an, driving the man to humiliate, to even kill – not just to snuff out, but to denigrate and besmirch and slander any name he might leave behind him. The man had gone mad. And Harry hadn’t a single scrap of hard evidence to prove it. And nor could he think of a single avenue or procedure he could follow, or officer he could confide in. Harry put his head in his hands briefly, then sat up and composed his face, and took a gulp of coffee. For the first time in his life, he realised he hadn’t a clue what he was supposed to do. All he knew right now was that the Bonny Boy Bonalleck was actually out to kill him – and that he felt powerless and afraid. But he couldn’t let anyone else see that. He was the captain.
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About the author
David Black is the author of the Harry Gilmour series of novels set in the Royal Navy submarine service during the Second World War.
He also wrote the novella, All the Freshness of the Morning, a fictionalised account of President John F Kennedy’s epic wartime service as skipper of the US Navy torpedo boat PT109 during the Solomons’ campaign against the Japanese in the South Pacific.
Black is a former UK national newspaper journalist and TV documentary producer. He now lives in Argyll and writes full time.
If you want to know more about the ships, aircraft, equipment and locations that feature in all the Harry Gilmour novels, go the website www.theblackscribe.co.uk and look under Resource, Glossaries.
My technical adviser is Captain Iain D. Arthur OBE RN, who is a former Captain (S) of the Devonport Flotilla of the Royal Navy Submarine Service