Heart of War (57 page)

H.M.S.
Penrith
plunged her bow into the wall like face of the wave, green and white water bursting in a bomb of spray straight up in the salt-laden air, to sweep back along the deck, smashing over the forward turret into the bridge structure, whirling past the reeling foremast and funnels, foaming along the quarterdeck and back into the sea. The bridge watchkeepers rocked on their heels, legs spread for balance, greatcoat collars turned up, salt-rimmed eyes searching the endless expanse of heaving water ahead.

The officer of the watch said, ‘Cape Wrath bears south, sir.'

Captain Leach said, ‘Starboard fifteen … steady on west by south.'

‘West by south, sir … steady, steady!'

Penrith
headed into the teeth of a winter gale, battened down, the lower messdecks already awash, water everywhere, every man soaked to the skin in the three hours since the light cruiser had passed the new Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir David Beatty, in H.M.S.
Queen Elizabeth
, the crew fallen-in by divisions on the upper deck from fo'c'sle to quarterdeck, all officers and ratings on the bridge except the officer conning the ship facing the battleship and saluting as the marine bugler sounded the ‘Alert.' As the ratings on
Queen Elizabeth's
decks faced
Penrith
, officers saluting, the admiral himself had come to the corner of his flag bridge and raised his cap six inches off his head. So
Penrith
had passed down the Flow, through the Grand Fleet, while the Officer of the Watch, a junior Sub Lieutenant, a copy of the Navy List in his hand, muttered to Captain Leach which captains were senior to him and must be saluted, and which were junior, and would initiate the salute. Now, three hours later, an almost visible aura of excitement pervaded the ship, a lightness, like children let out of a dark schoolroom into sunny playgrounds.
The Grand Fleet was Britain's right arm, her first and principal line of defence. When at sea it presented the most fearsome spectacle of disciplined power yet seen by man … seven squadrons of battleships, and battle cruisers, six of cruisers, over eighty destroyers … Yet every sailor of the Navy still hated service in it, because every sailor knew that after Jutland the German High Seas Fleet never would venture out again. Officers found guilty of minor peccadilloes anywhere else in the Service were sent to the Grand Fleet as a punishment. It was a prison, from which
Penrith
had just escaped, ordered to the North American and West Indies Station, at an hour's notice.

The Navy phone from the foretop, swaying wildly against the scudding clouds fifty feet above, whined tinnily – ‘Bridge – Object bearing green six oh … I think it's a ship's lifeboat.'

‘Port fifteen,' Captain Leach said. He stooped to another voice pipe – ‘Tom … object sighted, off the starboard bow, probably a lifeboat.'

‘Right, sir.'

In his cabin, Tom picked up his binoculars and hurried out onto the quarterdeck. There, he put the binoculars to his eyes, and tried with one hand to shield the eyepieces from the flying spray and water; but it was no use, there was too much of it, it filled the air and sky. Peering under his hand, watching the wavetops ahead, at last he saw it, rising, disappearing, rising, perched for a moment between the sea and sky on the crest of a great wave, about a mile away, a white-painted lifeboat, no mast or jury sail … too far to see whether there were oars over the side, but he thought not … definitely a sea anchor out for she was riding mostly head to sea, though on the front faces of some waves, the steep fall was slewing her round.

‘She'll capsize if that gets much worse,' he muttered.

On the bridge Leach, too, peered forward under his sheltering hand, and after a moment said, ‘I don't like it … Number One, put the scrambling nets out on the starboard side. Away sea boat's crew, but don't launch. Stand by the nets until we see what we've got.'

‘Aye, aye, sir!' Lieutenant Commander Mainprice-King slid down the bridge ladder. At once the boatswain's pipes twittered, and the chief boatswain's mate began to bark orders that sounded distant and thin against the bellow and
shriek of the wind and the smash of the sea.

The lifeboat came closer. ‘Half ahead both,' the captain ordered into the engine room pipe: then ‘Twenty of port wheel, quartermaster!'

‘Twenty of port wheel, sir … Twenty of port wheel on, sir.'

‘Starboard five … steady! Slow, both … Stop engines … Slow astern, port engine! Stop engines!'

The cruiser, stopped in the water, rolled heavily, wind and seas now striking her full on the port side. The mast head and foretop seemed to strike the crest of each wave as it passed by, but just in time the trough followed and
Penrith
righted herself and began to lurch to port. In the starboard wing of the bridge, looking back along the steel side, Leach saw the lifeboat coming closer as the cruiser drifted down on it. It was full of men … and women … it must have been a passenger ship that had been torpedoed. They were lying in the bottom-boards, among swirling water, flotsam, coats, lifebelts. Boat hooks reached out from the scrambling net and Lieutenant Mountjoy and a couple of sailors dropped into the lifeboat. Leach saw Mountjoy stoop and take one of the people's collars … turn him over … pause … onto the next, the next … the next … Mountjoy looked up toward the bridge and even from that distance Tom saw that his face was white, his mouth set, either in fierce anger or to prevent himself from vomiting. He gave some order to the sailors, which Leach could not hear, and scrambled back up the net to the cruiser's deck. A moment later he appeared on the bridge.

‘S.S.
Styria
, Liverpool, sir. Thirty-one men, nine women, six children. They're all dead.'

‘How?' the captain interjected.

‘Exposure, sir … starvation and thirst, too, perhaps … the water barrel's stove in … I told the men to delay doing anything until I'd spoken to you. Their eyes have all been eaten out … faces scratched.'

‘Gulls!' Leach exclaimed. ‘I don't remember when the
Styria
was sunk. It must have been some time ago.'

‘What …?' young Mountjoy began: Leach raised his hand – ‘I'm thinking.' After a minute he said, ‘Bridge messenger!'

‘Sir!'

‘Get me the prayer book off the desk in my day cabin.'

‘Aye, aye, sir!' The boy sailor darted down the bridge ladder.

The captain turned to Mountjoy – ‘Weight all the bodies with a shell. I'll read the burial service over them from the deck. Have a man in the boat and as soon as I'm finished signal him to scuttle it … Oh, and have a Union Flag dropped over them while I read. Haul it back as the boat sinks.'

Mountjoy saluted, turned, and left. Tom came up onto the bridge. Leach looked at him – ‘I think that'll satisfy the men's sense of decorum, don't you? What an utter swine the Hun really is.'

Half an hour later, the burial service completed, the cruiser's propellers began to turn again, thrusting the vessel ever westward, her long lean bows pointed to Cape Race on the south coast of Newfoundland, and Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The captain returned to the bridge, prayer book in his gloved hand, his face grim – ‘Who's on watch?'

Lieutenant Onslow from the far corner said, ‘I am, sir.'

‘You know the course?'

‘Yes, sir – west by south.'

‘Reduce speed to ten knots till this lessens. She's shaking to pieces.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

‘Tom, come to my cabin, please.'

Tom followed his captain down the ladders and aft along the lower deck to the big stern cabin. He waited, cap in hand, until Leach had sat down and waved him to a chair.

Leach said, ‘I haven't had a chance to speak to you since we got the orders … They're going to institute trans-Atlantic convoys. That's the only thing this move of ours can mean.'

‘They've been running them for some time on the Harwich-Scheldt route, sir,' Tom said.

‘Started in December last,' Leach said briefly, ‘and, since last month, on the cross-channel coal traffic – the French insisted. The Admiralty didn't want to do it, but the French were losing too much coal … Now it looks as if the Anti-Submarine Division have had their way and we're going to have all merchant ships convoyed, at least on principal routes … and they'll need cruisers for the trans-Atlantic run. Destroyers haven't got the endurance.'

‘And they'd have a very bad time in weather like this,' Tom said, rubbing his hands together.

‘You're soaked,' the captain exclaimed, noticing the gesture – ‘Here.' He opened a cupboard, took out a bottle,
and poured a stiff tot into a glass – ‘It's malt whisky … pure malt.'

Tom took a swig, let the golden fire trickle down his throat and emptied the glass – ‘Thank you, sir.'

‘It's about time … that they really accepted the convoy principle,' Leach said. ‘Our losses have been staggering since the Germans instituted unrestricted submarine warfare … 200,000 tons of shipping sunk in January, but 500,000 tons in February, after they'd opened the all-out campaign … and the figures are still climbing … I believe that Admiral Jellicoe warned the Cabinet some time back that if the trend wasn't stopped, we'd be starved out.'

Tom said, ‘But Admiral Jellicoe doesn't think the convoy system will work.'

‘It appears that he doesn't have any other suggestions, so it has been forced on him.'

The Navy phone spoke from the bridge – ‘Captain, sir.'

‘Yes?'

‘Object sighted ahead … foretop lookout thinks it's another lifeboat … black painted … can't see anyone in it, sir.'

Leach said, ‘Steer for it. I'm coming up.' He turned to Tom – ‘More corpses … more girls with their eyes pecked out … How clean Coronel and the Falkland Islands battles seem now.'

An afternoon, evening, and night had passed.
Penrith
sliced into lessening seas at sixteen knots, 120 nautical miles west-north-west of North Rhona, heading to make a landfall off the southern tip of Iceland. The sun peered out now and then through driven clouds. Rain squalls blew down the wind, spattered the deck, and passed on. The surface of the sea was pale green where the fitful sun shone on it, dull green-grey in the cloud shadow.

Tom Rowland worked at the little desk in his cabin off the quarterdeck. Someone knocked, and he said ‘Come in,' without looking up. The graph of tonnage sunk on the Harwich-Scheldt route, since the institution of convoys, was interesting, and indicative, though it did not cover a long enough period of time to be conclusive. He glanced up, to see Ordinary Seaman Charlie Bennett standing just inside the cabin door. He motioned with his hand and the sailor closed
the door quietly behind him. He held out his hand and Tom took it, pressing the soft palm with his fingers.

Charlie said, in a low voice, ‘Any chance of leave when we get over the other side, Tom?'

Tom shook his head – ‘Probably not for two or three months … and then what can we do in Halifax? We can't lose ourselves there – it's too small.' He wished Charlie wouldn't come in, on some pretext or other, so often. He had to come in now and then to clean the cabin, polish Tom's boots and shoes, lay out his clothes, and the like, but … sooner or later someone would notice; and above all he didn't want to put John Leach in an invidious position. He muttered, ‘Better run along, Charlie … Take my shoes.'

‘Aye, aye, sir,' Charlie said, grinning a secretive, shared smile. He let go Tom's hand, opened the door, and slid out.

The coast of Nova Scotia lay three miles ahead, pale grey under a pale sun. The sea was calm, as though half frozen, livid green in colour. A Royal Canadian Navy seaplane made a final circle overhead and then returned toward the land. On the bridge of H.M.S.
Penrith
, Captain Leach said, ‘Next time we come in here we may be escorting U.S. ships. Thank God for Mr Zimmermann and his stupidity! From the reports that have been passed on to us, the Americans seem to have gone through the roof when the news broke about this telegram.'

Tom said, ‘It's just in time, sir. We need the Americans badly now. There won't be any Eastern Front soon – Rumania knocked out, Serbia practically gone, Russia tottering on the edge of revolution.'

Leach said, ‘Our fellows are going to have a hard time in France this summer.'

Tom said, ‘A lot of people seem to believe we must try somewhere else. I believe the Prime Minister's one of them. They think the Western Front's turned into a slaughterhouse – and nothing more.'

The captain said grimly, ‘There'll be as much bloodshed in London over that question as there has been in France, till it's settled one way or the other … Meanwhile, if the Yanks do come in they will eventually be sending troops to France, hundreds of thousands of them. Who's going to protect them?'

‘Their Navy will do what it can,' Tom said.

‘Quite,' Leach said, ‘but it can't anywhere near do the job.
We'll
, have to, and if we fail, thousands of American soldiers are going to be drowned, which will not make the United States a very enthusiastic ally.'

Tom said, ‘All ships must have more depth charges, sir – even cruisers, certainly light cruisers. After all, any sort of ship can attack a submerged submarine. It doesn't take great speed or manoeuvreability.'

‘Just enough speed so it doesn't blow its own stern off,' Leach said, ‘and we've got to be able to fire the things off the beam, not just roll them off the stern. … I wonder whether anyone's trying to find out if eighty feet is really the right setting for the pistols. I talk with submariners whenever I get a chance and they all say that they wouldn't hesitate to go below eighty feet if they were being attacked – or in danger of it.'