HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) (2 page)

There was no answer. Probably the Captain was on his way up already. God, suppose he’d been killed, though … The midshipman called again: ‘Captain, sir!’ and a voice behind him said: ‘All right, Mid. I heard it.’

He turned round, to find the comforting bulk of the Captain’s duffle coat outlined against the dusk. It was not light enough to see the expression on his face, nor was there anything in his voice to give a clue to it. It did not occur to the midshipman to speculate about this, in any case: for him, this was simply the Captain, the man he had been waiting for, the man on whom every burden could now be squarely placed.

‘Torpedo, sir.’

‘Yes.’

The Captain, moving with purpose but without hurry, stepped up on the central compass platform, glanced once round him and sat down. There was something special in the act of sitting down, there in the middle of the noise and movement reaching the bridge from all over the ship, and everyone near him caught it. The Captain, on the bridge, sitting in the Captain’s chair. Of course: that was what they had been waiting for … It was the beginning, the tiny tough centre, of control and order. Soon it would spread outwards.

‘Which side was it from?’

‘Port, sir. Just under “A” gun.’

‘Tell the engine room what’s happened … Where is the First Lieutenant?’

‘He must have gone down, sir. I suppose he’s with the damage control party.’

Up the voice-pipe came the quartermaster’s voice again: ‘She won’t come round, sir. The wheel’s hard a-starboard.’

‘Never mind.’ The Captain turned his head slightly. ‘Pilot!’

A figure, bent over the chart table behind him, straightened up. ‘Sir?’

‘Work out our position, and we’ll send a signal.’

‘Just getting it out now.’

The Captain bent forward to the voice-pipe again. ‘Bosun’s Mate!’

‘Sir?’

‘Find the First Lieutenant. He’ll be forrard somewhere. Tell him to report the damage as soon as he can.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

That, at least, was a small space cleared … Under him the ship felt sluggish and helpless; on the upper deck the voices clamoured, from below the cries still welled up. He looked round him, trying in the increasing darkness to find out who was on the bridge. Not everyone he expected to see, not all the men who should have collected at such a moment, were there. The signalman and the bridge messenger. Two look-outs. Bridger, his servant, standing just behind him. Pilot and the Mid. Someone else he could not make out.

He called: ‘Coxswain?’

There was a pause, and then a voice said: ‘He was below, sir.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Adams, sir.’

Adams was the Chief Bosun’s Mate, and the second senior rating on board. After a moment the Captain said: ‘If he doesn’t get out, you take over, Adams … You’d better organize three or four of your quartermasters, for piping round the ship. I’ll want you to stay by me. If there’s anything to be piped you can pass it on.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

There was too much noise on the upper deck, for a start. But perhaps it would be better if he spoke to them over the loudhailer. Once more the Captain turned his head.

‘Yeoman!’

Another pause, and then the same definitive phrase, this time from the signalman of the watch: ‘He was below, sir.’

A wicked lurch, and another tearing noise from below, covered the silence after the words were spoken. But the Captain seemed to take them in his stride.

‘See if the hailer’s working,’ he said to the signalman.

‘I’ve got the position, sir,’ said Haines, the navigating officer. ‘Will you draft a signal?’

‘Get on to the W/T office and see if they can send it, first.’

‘The hailer’s all right, sir,’ said the signalman. ‘Batteries still working.’

‘Very good. Train the speaker aft.’

He clicked on the microphone, and from force of habit blew through it sharply. A healthy roar told him that the thing was in order. He cleared his throat.

‘Attention, please! This is the Captain speaking.’ His voice, magnified without distortion, overcame the wind and the shouting, which died away to nothing, ‘I want to tell you what’s happened. We’ve been torpedoed on the port side, under “A” gun. The First Lieutenant is finding out about the damage now. I want you all to keep quiet, and move about as little as possible, until I know what the position is … “X” gun’s crew will stand fast, the rest of the watch on deck clear away the boats and rafts ready for lowering. Do
not
start lowering, or do anything else, until I give the order over this hailer, or until you hear the pipe. That is all.’

The speaker clicked off, leaving silence on the bridge and all over the upper deck. Only the voices hidden below still called. He became aware that Haines was standing by his elbow, preparing to speak.

‘What is it, Pilot?’

‘It’s the W/T office, sir. They can’t transmit.’

‘Who’s down there?’

‘The leading tel., sir. The PO tel. was below.’ (That damned phrase again. If those two messes, the Chiefs’ and the Petty Officers’, were both written off, it was going to play hell with organizing the next move, whatever it was.) ‘But he knows what he’s doing, sir,’ Haines went on. ‘The dynamo’s been thrown off the board, but the set’s had a hell of a knock anyway.’

‘Go down yourself and make sure.’ Haines, as well as being navigating officer, was an electrical expert, and this was in fact his department.

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

‘Midshipman!’

‘Sir?’

‘Pass the word to the Gunnery Officer.’

‘I’m here, sir.’ Guns’ tall figure loomed up behind him. ‘I’ve been looking at “A” gun.’

‘Well?’

‘It’s finished, I’m afraid, sir.’

Guns knew his job, and the Captain did not ask him to elaborate. Instead he said: ‘I think we’ll try a little offensive action while we’re waiting, in case those — come up to take a look at us.’ He considered. ‘Close up on “X” gun, go into local control, fire a spread of star-shell through this arc’ – he indicated the port bow and beam– ‘and let fly if you see anything. I’ll leave the details to you.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

Guns clumped off down the ladder on his way aft. It was one of his idiosyncrasies to wear street-cleaner’s thigh boots with thick wooden soles, and his movements up and down the ship were easily traceable, earning indeed a good deal of fluent abuse from people who were trying to get to sleep below. As the heavy footfalls receded aft, the Captain stood up and leant over the port side of the bridge, staring down at the tumbling water. There was nothing to be seen of the main area of the damage, which was hidden by the outward flare of the bows; but the ship had less freedom of movement now – she was deeper, more solidly settled in the water. They must have taken tons of it in the ripped-up spaces forward: the fo’c’sle covering them looked like a slowly crumbling ruin. It was about time the First Lieutenant came through with his report. If they had to – ‘What’s that?’ he asked suddenly.

A thin voice was calling, ‘Bridge, Bridge,’ from one of the voice-pipes. He bent down to the row nearest to him, but from none of them did the voice issue clearly. Behind him the midshipman was conducting the same search on his side. The voice went on calling, ‘Bridge, Bridge, Bridge,’ in a patient monotone. It was the Captain’s servant, Bridger, who finally traced it – a voice-pipe low down on the deck, its anti-spray cover still clipped on.

The man bent down to it and snapped back the cover. ‘Bridge here.’

A single murmured sentence answered him. Bridger looked up to the Captain. ‘It’s the Engineer Officer, sir, speaking from the galley flat.’

The Captain bent down. A waft of bitter fume-laden air met his nostrils. ‘Yes, Chief?’

‘I’m afraid Number One got caught by that last bulkhead, sir.’

‘What happened? I heard it go a little while back.’

‘We thought it would hold, sir.’ The level voice, coming from the heart of the ruined fo’c’sle, had an apologetic note, as if the speaker, even in that shambles, had had the cool honesty to convict himself of an error of judgment. ‘It did look like holding for a bit, too. Number One was with the damage control party, between the seamen’s mess-deck and the bathrooms. They’d shut the watertight door behind them, and were just going to shore up, when the forrard bulkhead went.’ Chief paused. ‘You know what it’s like, sir. We can’t get at them without opening up.’

‘Can’t do that now, Chief.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Can you hear anything?’

‘Not now.’

‘How many were there with the First Lieutenant?’

‘Fourteen, sir. Mostly stokers.’ There was another pause. ‘I took charge down here, sir. We’re shoring up the next one.’

‘What do you think of it?’

‘Not too good. It’s badly strained already, and leaking down one seam.’ There was, now, a slightly sharpened note in the voice travelling up from below. ‘There’s a hell of a mess down here, sir. And if this one goes, that’ll mean the whole lot.’

‘Yes, I know.’ The Captain thought quickly, while overhead and to port the sea was suddenly lit up by a cold yellow glare – the first spread of star-shell, four slowly dropping lights shadowing their spinning parachutes against the cloud overhead. Very pretty … The news from below could hardly have been worse: it added up to fully a third of the ship flooded, all the forward mess-decks cut off, fourteen men drowned at one stroke, and God knows how many more caught by the original explosion. ‘Look here, Chief. I don’t want any more men lost like that. You must use your own judgment about getting out in a hurry. See how the shoring up goes, and let me know as soon as you can if you think it’ll hold.’

‘All right, sir.’

‘We’re firing star-shell at the moment, to see if there’s anything on the surface. “X” gun may be firing independently, any time from now on.’

‘All right, sir.’

‘Take care of yourself, Chief.’

He could almost hear the other man smiling at what was, from the Captain, an unexpected remark. ‘I’ll do that, sir.’

The voice-pipe went dead. Walking back to his chair, the Captain allowed himself a moment of profound depression and regret. The First Lieutenant gone. A good kid, doing his first big job in the Navy and tremendously keen to do it properly. With a young wife, too – the three of them had had dinner at the Adelphi in Liverpool, not two weeks ago. There was a bad letter to be written there, later on. And the loss might make a deal of difference to the next few hours.

The star-shell soared and dropped again. Sitting in his chair, waiting for Chief’s report, listening to the green seas slapping and thumping against the side as
Marlborough
sagged downwind in the wave troughs with a new, ugly motion, he was under no illusions as to what the next few hours might bring, and the chances of that ‘bad letter’ ever being written by himself. But that was not what he was now concentrating on: that was not in the mapped-out programme … This was the moment for which the Navy had long been preparing him: for years his training and experience had had this precise occasion in view; that was why he was a commander, and the Captain of
Marlborough
when she was hit. Taking charge, gauging chances, foreseeing the next eventuality and if necessary forestalling it – none of it could take him by surprise, any more than could the chapter headings of a favourite book. When the moment had arrived he had recognized it instantly, and the sequence of his behaviour had lain before him like a familiar pattern, of which he now had to take the tenth or twentieth tracing. He had not been torpedoed before, but no matter: tucked away in his mind and brain there had always been a picture of a torpedoed ship, and of himself as, necessarily, the key figure in this picture. Now that the curtain was drawn, and the image became the reality, he simply had to play his assigned part with as much intelligence, skill, and endurance as he could muster. The loss of the First Lieutenant and over half the ship’s company already was a bitter stroke, both personally and professionally: it would return in full force later; but for the moment it was only a debit item which had to be fitted into the evolving picture.

‘Signalman!’

‘Sir.’

‘Get the Gunnery Officer on the quarter-deck telephone.’ A pause. More star-shell, reflected on a waste of cold tumbling water, dropped slowly till they were drowned in darkness again. There wasn’t really much point in going on with the illumination now: the U-boat probably thought they had other ships in company ready to counter-attack, and had sheered off. She had, indeed, cause to be satisfied, without pursuing the advantage further …

‘Gunnery Officer on the telephone, sir.’

The Captain took the proffered receiver. ‘Guns?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I’m afraid Number One has been killed. I want you to take over.’

‘Oh – all right, sir.’

Hearing the shocked surprise in his voice, the Captain remembered that the two of them had been very good friends. But that, again, was something to be considered later: only the bald announcement was part of the present pattern. He continued: ‘I think you had better stay aft, as if we were still at full action stations. Chief is in charge of damage control forrard. Stop star-shelling now – I take it you’ve seen nothing.’