* * *
Quilla’s noon position – 57 degrees 12 minutes north, 11 degrees 40 west – was hoisted at a few minutes past the hour, beating most of her neighbours to it and closely matching the Commodore ship’s result. Fixes would vary slightly in any case in a convoy three miles wide and two deep. Cadets Elliot and Merriman had run the flags up – two hoists each of five flags, on halyards secured at the after end of the bridge deck and rove through blocks on a wire stay linking foremasthead to funnel-top.
This was now Andy’s watch, although Waller was still up here. So was the Old Man and the chief engineer, with whom he’d been conferring – yet another midday routine. And Cadet Dixon was on the monkey island, one level above the bridge, looking out for further flag signals from the Commodore, in particular for an order to alter course, adjusting for last night’s excursion westward.
Andy asked Waller, ‘Does Dixon know his flags?’
‘Should do. We’ve been drilling ’em at it long enough. But I’ll check.’
‘Good man.’ Waller went out into the bridge wing – access to the monkey island was external, iron ladders port and starboard – and Andy nodded to the helmsman. ‘All right, Selby?’
‘Right enough, sir. Gerry sleepin’ it off like, seems.’
Meaning no indications of U-boats in the offing – yet. Mentally one crossed fingers. There’d been nothing on the air-waves that could be attributed to U-boats, according to the Marconi boys. In fact, based on convoys’ experiences in recent months, one didn’t expect daylight attacks. Radio exchanges were something else, customarily preceding the next dark-hours assault. Although it was quite on the cards that last night’s pack could have been diverted to some home-bound convoy. Orders from U-boat headquarters in western France, maybe, if they’d received a sighting report from a boat reconnoitring further west, or from an aircraft – four-engined Focke Wulf 200s being based now in the region of Bordeaux. Based there and sinking ships too, especially any independently-routed ships they happened to come across, but ships in convoy too. It was partly to stay out of the FW’s unfortunately wide range of operations that convoys were being routed this far north.
He had his glasses up, sweeping from the bow down the exposed port side, when Waller yelled down the pipe from monkey island, ‘Signal from Commodore, alter course in succession to 318!’
‘In succession’ meant wheeling, not turning simultaneously as in an emergency turn. So the shape of the convoy would be maintained, ships in column following each other round, those on the outside of the turn needing to increase engine revs slightly, while those over to starboard came down by a few turns. Not yet – when the Commodore hauled down that hoist, wheels would be put over. Andy went to the chart and laid off the new course as from 1215, a three-mile run-on from the noon position. He came back and told the Old Man, ‘We’ll have Rockall thirty-five miles abeam at 1730, sir.’
‘Distance then to point “A”?’
‘Hundred miles exactly, sir. Making it one-thirty, two a.m.’
* * *
After they’d turned, the Old Man had gone down to his lunch and stayed down for a couple of hours, catching up on sleep he’d missed last night, but he was back on the bridge by three-thirty when the CRO, Foster, came to report that there’d been a signal to the Commodore from C-in-C Western Approaches with the cheering news that the SS Ellesbroek had made it into Londonderry; Ellesbroek being one of the ships that had been torpedoed last night. Andy looked her up on the convoy diagram.
‘She was number six in column three, sir. Belgian, I think.’
‘Good for her, anyway.’ Beale was filling his pipe. ‘What else, Foster?’
Because the CRO was still hovering, there obviously was more. He grimaced slightly. ‘U-boat-type transmissions, sir, ahead of us and northwest. Started with one call repeated several times, now there’s been three or four at it.’
Old Man concentrating on the stuffing of his pipe. ‘Don’t have to be us the buggers are stalking.’
Foster looked doubtful. ‘Across our track though, and one out on the beam to starboard.’
‘Shadower. Let me know, any changes.’ Flicking a storm-lighter into action, then between puffs, ‘Hear that, Second?’
Andy nodded. ‘Looks like another night of it.’
‘Does that, all right.’ Looking at him, with that creasing of what might or might not have been humour in and around the eyes. ‘Arseholes up to their usual bloody tricks.’ Expelling smoke, pipe going well enough now. Adding, ‘God rot ’em…’ Shake of the head. ‘Thinking, Holt – your defence station – waste of you down aft there. Patterson’s sound enough, don’t need his hand held – would you say?’
‘Sure he doesn’t, sir. But what about spotting and control?’
‘Experience for a cadet. Whichever of ’em you reckon might do best. All done the course, eh? An’ if there was problems, nothing to stop you nipping aft, eh?’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘I’ll inform Mr Brown, you set it up, have a word with Patterson.’
This was good. You could spend all night and every night on that gun-deck and never see a U-boat; and gun-control as taught by RN personnel in dockyard sheds in all the major ports was simple enough. But why the change from previous ship’s routine… He raised it with Harve Brown when handing over the watch to him at four, and the mate’s low-voiced explanation was that the Old Man had taken an aversion to Andy’s predecessor, had preferred whenever possible to keep him at a distance.
* * *
Gus Waller told them an hour later, in the saloon over mugs of tea and cigarettes, ‘Seems London got it again last night. Other cities too.’
Air raids, he was talking about. Andy queried, ‘Not your part of London, let’s hope.’
Shake of the yellow head, red face. ‘Docks, CRO said. I’m from Tottenham, as it happens. But hotting up all right – most nights now.’
‘I got caught in a raid on Merseyside, six or eight weeks back.’ Andy accepted a Senior Service from Bridgeman, the engineer with the beard. ‘Took a girl to the flicks, had to get her back to Birkenhead, some goon in a tin hat and an armband ordered us to take shelter in the Underground. No bloody option. So I didn’t get her home until sparrow-fart and her father didn’t believe us, turned quite nasty.’ He added, ‘Piddling little raids mind you, those first ones.’
‘But – end July, that week’ – Bridgeman – ‘supposed to’ve shot down more than a hundred of ’em?’
‘Warming up to invade, they’re saying. Soon as they can wear down the RAF.’
‘Which please God they won’t. Bloody Germans on British soil – give you the shivers just to think of it!’
‘Shivers is fucking right!’
Bridgeman glanced at Andy. ‘How they converse, in Tottenham.’
‘Changing the subject’ – and expelling a first cloud of smoke – ‘your previous second mate, name of —’
‘Shithead’s my name for him. Gone for his Master’s.’ Meaning to sit for his master’s certificate – which if he got it would qualify him for employment as first mate. Waller added, ‘He looked like coming back here as mate, personally I’d take off.’
Like family secrets emerging, as one gradually became one of them. And the gun-control business now – all three cadets wanted the job, and he picked Merriman, who was the senior of them by a week or two, then sent for Patterson and told him.
* * *
Sleep now. Four thirty-five: might get in three hours before supper, plus another stretch during the first watch if one wanted more and the bastards stayed away that long. If… It seemed unlikely, with a shadower out there already and others closing in across the convoy’s line of advance.
Three hours’ caulk was a happy prospect anyway.
Write to Julia first?
Not a lot of point, he supposed, when it could only be mailed from Cuba in about three weeks’ time. It was just that one had this urge to be in touch, feel in touch. On the other hand, if one c
ame to grief and the ship remained afloat, a letter would exist, might get to her; the main thing being that then it wouldn’t be only her unsupported word that they’d planned to marry.
Vital thing, really.
Write to the parents too?
When she had the child, she might want him or her to know its grandparents. Might want their help, too. But there again, with only her word for it that he was the father and would have married her – how might they react?
Just another of Andy’s girls…
And whose fault would that be?
Brain-wave, then. Write not to them, but to his sister, Annabel. She was eighteen and a probationer nurse, working in a hospital in Edinburgh. Working about twenty-five hours a day, she’d told him. Write telling her everything that mattered, stipulating that the parents were to be informed only in the event of his own nonreturn, and if Julia OK’d it.
Two letters, then, to be mailed from Nuevitas. But sleep on it now: could be a rough night coming.
3
On the bridge a few minutes short of midnight – darkish, no moon, thickened cloud cover taking care of that – Waller told him that, according to the CRO, U-boat wireless transmissions had dried up. One could only guess at a logical progression of the situation as one had assessed it earlier when they’d been nattering to each other: closer now, fairly obviously, keeping quiet while closing in across the convoy’s van – or in position, waiting for others to join them maybe, marking time, plotting the convoy’s approach from data supplied by the shadower who’d been to the east or northeast some eight hours ago. Shadower silent now too, but out there still, liable to crackle into life again if he considered there was reason to. If you’d had anything like a proper escort at that time, one or two of them might have been sent out on that bearing to put the bugger down, or drive him off – maybe even sink him.
But you hadn’t. You had one elderly sloop. Which two hours earlier, according to Waller, had thrashed doggedly up the port side and gone out of sight ahead. Would be in the northern sector now, presumably, where the shadower had last been heard from and where one might expect the rest of them – whenever…
That was the picture as well as one could judge, in preparing to take over the middle watch. The Commodore might have more to go on, of course, beingby the Ops Room back in Liverpool, with whatever they had from sources such as escort commanders of other convoys, radio intercepts or patrolling aircraft – of which unfortunately there were very few, the east coast invasion watch having priority in allocation of resources, and, according to Andy’s father, the RAF having their own notions of how best to use such resources, favouring wide-ranging patrols to the close defence of convoys. In memory, the old man’s growl of ‘Stupid sods. Blind chance of stumbling on a surfaced U-boat in a million square miles of bloody ocean, whereas convoys are where U-boats all too obviously foregather! Wouldn’t you call that plain common sense?’
Course 318, still. Swell lower than it had been, though still noticeable, Quilla being in ballast. Wind down too, no more than force three. Coolish, for all that. The Old Man had taken a set of stars a couple of hours ago before the cloud had begun to build up, which had put them half a mile east of what would have been the estimated position as run-on from noon. Rockall now eighty-five miles south-southeast, and the distance to position ‘A’ twenty-two miles. Best to use that starsight fix for all practical purposes now, he thought; if for instance the Commodore ordered dispersal at position ‘A’, freeing one from adherence to any convoy routing.
Some freedom – if the bastards were already in close attendance, and seeing that ships routed independently were in any case more likely to get clobbered than those in convoy; statistically that was the truth of it, apparently. He came back to Waller: ‘OK. Go get your head down.’
Derisive snort. ‘How long? Ten minutes?’
‘Yeah. Wouldn’t bother taking your socks off.’
The helmsman was AB Samways again. Old Man propped in the port for’ard corner, binoculars at his eyes, not even grunting when Waller called, ‘Goodnight, sir.’ Andy put his own glasses up, checking on near neighbours first and the areas of sea between and around them. Bearings and distances seemingly about right, although on further consideration one might come up a couple of revs, if a present tendency continued – distance to the Pole having by the look of it increased somewhat in recent minutes. Although the relative bearing of the Cedarwood seemed spot-on. Check again in a moment. Better to take remedial action promptly than wait too long and give the Old Man reason to bawl one out. Especially since being newly-joined as well as brand-new in the role of second mate one might reasonably expect to be on trial to some extent. But checking astern – briefly out into the port wing of the bridge to do so – picking up the Harvest Queen’s flare of bow-wave dead astern and at about the right distance, then returning to focus again on the Byalystok, finding she’d wandered far enough out of column to leave the Catherine Bell – at least, the whiteness under her counter – clearly visible at something like 1,200 yards. Byalystok therefore less competently handled than she should be at this juncture?
Give it a few minutes, make certain. If you came up in revs and the Pole chose that moment to come down a few, you’d wish you hadn’t.
Time now, 0007.
* * *
He’d written those two letters and stashed them in his boat bag or ‘panic-bag’, a holdall in which one kept important items like certificates and other documents and valuables, cash if one had any – which he didn’t, really, having come down to his last pound by the end of the Newcastle trip. He’d been unusually well-heeled when he’d signed off from the PollyAnna, having a certain amount of pay due to him, also funds supplied by both parents on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday, which he’d celebrated in Vitoria at the height of the Glauchau business. But six months ashore at the Nautical College, with no further emoluments coming in and sundry expenses including several trips away – one to Helensburgh when his father had had that leave, and three in all to Newcastle.
‘Holt!’
‘Aye, sir.’ And over his shoulder then, ‘Dixon – steam-whistle, two short blasts, twice!’ Having seen it at the same moment as the Old Man: emergency turn to port, red light signal from the Commodore – Commodore-ship not visible, but the lights on his yardarm clear enough even through a mile and a half of darkness. Whether the old boy’s reason for ordering a turn might be a renewal of radio activity suggesting an attack was imminent, or a tip-off from Western Approaches, or just an attempt to lose the shadower if there was reason to think he was still with them, it made sense in terms of the broad picture in one’s mind – Rockall that distance astern, U-boat pack maybe not far ahead, and that dark and empty ocean stretching away westward: why not dodge away into it?
Red display still there. Old Man with his glasses on it, Andy making another quick check on neighbours, a few sirens still blasting off. Neighbours all where they should have been – except for the Pole, on whom if she was clumsily handled in this manoeuvre one had better keep a sharpish eye. The new course would be 273 – near as damnit due west. He heard the Old Man’s growl of ‘There you go’ – red lights having been switched off, the executive order to put helms over. He told Samways, who was waiting for it, ‘Port fifteen.’
‘Port fifteen, sir.’
Throwing the wheel around…
‘Fifteen o’ port wheel on, sir.’
‘Steer 273.’
‘Two seven three, sir.’
Fifteen degrees of rudder had been specified in the convoy orders, so that turning circles would at any rate approximately match each other. Quilla’s rudder beginning to haul her round now, Byalystok on the turn too – promptly enough – and Cedarwood falling back abaft the beam. Quilla would still be keeping station on the Pole, keeping him on, say, 320 degrees at the standard 600 yards – or trying to. Lumbering round through sea churned white by the Byalystok’s and Catherine Bell’s wakes; pitching more noticeably as she swung her b
ow into the direction of the swell.
The Old Man cleared his throat. ‘Holt – we’ll go to defence stations.’
* * *
Half an hour ago, that had been. The emergency turn had been logged – by Dixon, who’d since been sent to join Elliot on the boat-deck – as taking place at 0028, and it was now coming up for one a.m. Every passing minute maybe improving chances of getting away with this. If there’d been a shadower close enough to have spotted the red-light signal you could bet there’d have been an immediate outbreak of wireless activity – and there hadn’t been. So fingers crossed. Andy still had the conning of the ship meanwhile, the Old Man having as yet shown no interest in taking over. Quilla this far maintaining distance and bearing on the Byalystok; her blacker-than-darkness steadily pitching image foreshortened in quarter-profile, splodgily underlined in white, stern light faint but still in the arc of visibility. Engine revs had needed to be adjusted a couple of times, the Pole presumably having had to do the same to hold her station on the Catherine Bell. One or both of them maybe having problems with ‘critical revs’, the range of engine speeds which an individual ship couldn’t maintain without developing the shakes, vibration threatening damage to shafts and glands, and the only way to cope with it in convoy being to switch between slightly higher and slightly lower speeds. You needed higher revs to provide twelve knots now in any case, heading into the swell, than you had before the turn.
Pitching westward, rolling quite hard as well; empty as she was, she’d do both in anything but a flat calm. Regular ship-noise and sea-noise, rhythm of thumps, groans and shudders as her stem dug in, lifted as it butted through, white suds flying and plastering her forepart. Creak of ship’s gear a familiar, unending background. Old Man in the bridge’s port for’ard corner, Andy close to buzzers and voice-pipes, Waller within arm’s reach of the telegraphs, all three with their glasses up and searching, shifting round, sectors getting the most constant attention being from about four points on the starboard bow to a couple abaft the beam to port, where an anticlockwise arc of search came up against the bow-wave of the Harvest Queen. You could leave the rest of the all-round search to her, to a group like this in her bridge – she being especially vulnerable to attack, with nothing but the heave of dark ocean either directly ahead of her or astern, nor to port.
Non-Combatants Page 4