Convoy (28 page)

As Yorke grabbed his duffel coat and cap he asked: ‘Much smoke?’

‘No, sir – course, she’s a motor ship. Before the signalling Captain Hobson called the chief engineer up to the bridge to look and he says it’s probably just sooting up because we’re only making six knots. We’ll be doing the same in a few days, he says, unless we work up to full speed for a while to blow out the carbon.’

By now they had reached the bridge and Captain Hobson handed Yorke a piece of paper.

‘That’s what the commodore said in reply; of course, we couldn’t read what the
Penta
was flashing.’

Yorke read the hurriedly written words, jotted down letter by letter as someone, probably the third officer, read out the Morse letters flickering out questions from the Aldis lamp an the commodore’s bridge: ‘Is it serious… How long for repairs… Rejoin convoy before darkness, if necessary on one engine.’

Hobson saw Yorke glancing ahead to the Swedish ship. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong – she’s smoking a bit, but I had the chief engineer up – he’s still in the wheelhouse – and he says the smoke is about what you’d expect at this slow speed.’

‘He can’t give us any other clues?’ Yorke asked impatiently, irritated by what seemed to be a superficial, shrug-of-the shoulders comment.

‘No, says we’ll be as bad ourselves in a few days. Sparking at night as well. It’s happened before; we just leave the convoy for an hour and work up to full speed: that blows the muck out.’

Cadet Reynolds said: ‘The
Penta
’s moving out, sir.’

And she was turning a few degrees to starboard so that she was soon between the columns of ships and obviously slowing down to let the
Marynal
and
Flintshire
overtake and leave her astern of the convoy.

‘I suggest we don’t seem too curious,’ Yorke said to Hobson, who nodded and led the way into the wheelhouse.

‘We can see all we want from in here,’ Hobson said, watching with his binoculars through the narrow horizontal slits which were like letter box slots cut in the armour plating. ‘Not that there’s much to see. A couple of mates on the bridge this side. Smoke about the same. They’re just keeping steerage way. Nice-looking ship. She’s got a couple of 40-ton jumbo derricks at number three hatch. That 20-tonner we have is useless, but the owners won’t change it.’

By now, the
Penta
was getting close, and Yorke could see she was well painted: she spent the end of a voyage in a Swedish port with no war, no blackout, and no shortages. There would be plenty of paint and plenty of painters – and plenty of profits to pay for the labour. The other ships in the convoy looked like the poor and ugly sisters – rust streaks because quick turn-rounds did not leave enough time for a ship’s company to get over the side and chip, scrape and paint: there’s a war on, mate…

Soon the
Penta
had dropped so far astern that she was on the
Flintshire
’s quarter, and Watkins came into the wheelhouse looking for Yorke. ‘Talk, sir, between the escorts, but nothing for us,’ he said, obviously being discreet. Yorke walked out of the wheelhouse with him and round to the after side of the bridge.

‘Just “Lancaster” telling “Cornwall” and “Kent” – the corvette on each quarter – that the
Penta
(they didn’t mention her name) was dropping astern to make some repairs, sir.’

Yorke nodded because it was all so routine. ‘Lancaster’ was Johnny Gower’s radio code name (chosen as a partner to ‘Yorke’), while the escort was generically known as ‘Cantab’ although each frigate and corvette had her own individual name. On this occasion the Commodore would have made a signal to the senior officer of the escort, Johnny Gower, that a merchant ship was leaving the convoy for a few hours, and Johnny would have told the corvettes and no one would mention the word ‘Swedish’…and they all knew that Yorke in the
Marynal
was listening. There was nothing to arouse anyone’s suspicion; no signals were being made to the
Marynal
. There was no deviation from the normal routine – that was something he and Johnny Gower had discussed in detail. If the Swede was up to something, there must be nothing out of the ordinary to put him on his guard. Likewise in case it was not the Swede but something else in or around the convoy, it was essential that she or they should not know that a special lookout was being kept from the
Marynal
. People might do something (with the escort three miles away or the commodore across the convoy) if the ships close round them – ships like the
Marynal
– were believed to be normal merchant ships.

Watkins went back to the hot cabin packed with radio gear – the glowing valves kept it pleasantly warm in a cold climate, but he would be grumbling about the heat long before they reached the Tropic of Cancer. Still, Yorke thought unsympathetically, he could not have it both ways. At that moment he saw the Swedish ship had stopped and her bow was gradually paying off as the wind pushed her round. In a minute or so she would be lying athwart the seas and rolling heavily. Curious…

‘That’s odd,’ Hobson said from just behind him. ‘Not making it any easier for the engineers, are they… If they’d keep one screw turning they’d head into these seas. I can’t believe they have trouble with both engines. Maybe once she starts rolling there’ll be complaints from the engine room and the bridge will let ’em keep one going.’

Yorke said nothing and Hobson, who had obviously been thinking aloud, said: ‘Don’t take any notice of me; obviously her captain wouldn’t do anything without talking it over with his chief engineer. So they must have trouble in both engines.’

‘It’s a pity we can’t spare one of those corvettes to stand by her,’ Yorke said crossly, pulling his duffel coat tighter: it was bitterly cold out here with the wind eddying round the wheelhouse.

‘Aye,’ Hobson said, chuckling, ‘a sort of chaperone, eh?’

What were the chances of two engines breaking down? Two engines might carbon up at the same time – indeed quite naturally they would, but according to the
Marynal
’s chief engineer, all they needed was to be run under load for an hour. Contaminated fuel? That would affect both engines, but each had its own series of filters, and it would be unusual to shut both engines down to clean both sets of filters at the same time. Clean one set and then clean the other. But…but… Supposing a nasty old lady put round the word that the vicar was up to some nonsense which she refused to describe: then people would watch him secretly, and if the poor man paused to stare into a hedgerow, they would never consider that he might be looking at a bird’s nest; an innocent peering into the hedge round a neighbour’s garden could become a peeping Tom…

‘It’s a right bugger, isn’t it?’ Hobson commented. ‘There’s nothing to get your teeth into.’

Almost exactly six hours later Yorke stood with Captain Hobson at the same place on the after side of the bridge, watching the
Penta
astern. It would be dark in half an hour; already the cadet of the watch was going round the various cabins making sure the deadlights were closed and screwed down tight.

‘No, I can’t explain it,’ Hobson said, ‘but it’s like what you were saying about the vicar looking over the hedge: he might be looking at Mrs Buggins’ hollyhocks, but he might also be looking at Mrs Buggins undressing in her bedroom beyond the hollyhocks.’

‘And you agree the
Penta
was making fifteen knots when she came into sight over the horizon?’ Yorke asked.

‘She must have been. Just about her maximum, I’d say – why with the glasses you saw her bow and quarter waves.’

‘And how far off was she when she slowed down?’

‘Four miles? You said something at the time but I was too busy watching her through my glasses.’

‘I said that I reckoned she was between three and four miles.’

‘You want my confirmation, eh? I’ll put it down in the log if you like. Would that help?’

‘It’s worth logging,’ Yorke said, looking at his watch. ‘We might need evidence one day. And she slowed down an hour and fifteen minutes ago.’

‘As much as that? Maybe she has engine trouble again. On one screw, perhaps.’

Yorke shook his head. ‘She’s stayed exactly on course. One propeller trying to push her round in circles against the rudder would keep the quartermaster busy; he’d never hold such a straight course.’ Yorke gestured astern at the
Marynal
’s wake. ‘The Swede’s keeping as good a course as us.’

‘Maybe he’s nervous – look!’ Hobson gestured as a small blue pinprick of light showed on the
Penta
’s bridge. Yorke hurried round to the foreside of the bridge and was in time to meet Reynolds who reported excitedly: ‘Commodore calling up the
Penta
, sir!’

‘Read the signal and the
Penta
’s reply,’ Yorke said, pulling out a notebook and pencil.

Reynolds spelled out the words of the Commodore’s signal while Yorke watched the
Penta
for the long dash, T, showing the word had been received. ‘Take up original position,’ the Commodore ordered, and then asked: ‘Are all repairs completed?’ He too was obviously puzzled by the
Penta
suddenly slowing down.

‘Temporary repairs completed and hope final tomorrow,’ the
Penta
answered, finishing with ‘AR’ signalling the end of the message, and to which the Commodore gave a brief ‘R’. The exchange of signals was over. Did it mean anything?

‘What was all that?’ Hobson asked, and when Yorke read him the two signals he commented, ‘He can make full speed on temporary repairs…yet he’ll be dropping astern again tomorrow… It’ll be interesting to see if he goes out of sight again.’

‘More interesting to see if we get an attack tonight’, Yorke said, then found himself startled by what he had said, as though the words had been spoken by a stranger.

Hobson stared at him, his homely features becoming taut, as though just given proof of his wife’s unfaithfulness. ‘Like that, is it?’

The dull red flash over on the port bow was like a great furnace door flung open for a few seconds and then slammed again. It made a deep reverberation, rather than an explosion, and Yorke looked at the luminous hands of his watch. Eight twenty. One torpedo. The insider had started.

‘Second ship in the fourth column,’ Captain Hobson said. ‘In the next column to us, in other words, and she is on the
Penta
’s port bow. I wonder…’

He broke off as a second red glow dead ahead silhouetted the Swedish ship for a few moments, signalling that one of the leading ships in the
Marynal
’s column had been hit.

‘That could be the leader of our column,’ Hobson said.

‘No, it’ll be the second. The U-boat probably fired a bow tube at the first ship and the stern tube at the second.’

‘Has he time to reload that stern tube and fire at us as we go past?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Yorke said, ‘but it might be the other way round, and he has his bow heading this way. Anyway you’ll be leaving the sinking ship to port so she’ll still be between us and the U-boat.’ It was a tactful way of making sure Hobson took the
Marynal
the right way, but the Yorkshireman was already calling a helm order through to the wheelhouse and looking astern to see if he could distinguish the
Flintshire
.

‘The
Penta
’s beginning to swing out to starboard, sir,’ the cadet reported and Yorke recognized the voice of young Reynolds. ‘And I can see torches flashing about on that torpedoed ship – she looks heeled over, the best I can see with the glasses, so they’re probably abandoning – Jesus!’ he exclaimed as another red flash lit up everyone on the bridge and for a moment Yorke saw all the ships on the starboard side of the convoy.

‘Another one in about the same position as the first,’ Hobson said. ‘Must be the third ship in that column hit while she was passing. That German reloaded fast!’

‘No, that was from his bow tubes.’

‘You think it’s an insider, not a pack?’

Never forecast the result on the day of the race – Yorke remembered a journalist giving him that advice years ago. ‘Yes,’ Yorke answered. ‘No one’s been hit on the wings of the convoy.’

‘Flames, sir,’ Reynolds reported urgently. ‘That last ship – I saw some round by number two hatch, as though they’re coming up the ventilators.’

By now the Swedish ship was swinging well out to starboard to clear the torpedoed ship ahead of her and Hobson was passing another helm order to the quartermaster in the wheelhouse. Yorke called up to Jenkins, the leading seaman who was standing on the monkey island above the bridge, the microphone of a Tannoy system in his hand, waiting to pass fire orders to his guns.

‘Jenkins – tell your fellows to train round to red seven-five: there’s just a chance you might spot this submarine on the surface, beyond the torpedoed ships. Open fire at once if you do – the tracer might make the Jerries keep their heads down.’

As he finished speaking he was just beginning to distinguish Jenkins’ figure standing up against the night sky, wearing a steel helmet and hunched over the microphone, and he realized the slight flicker was because the whole ship – all the nearby ships in fact – were being lit up by the flames suddenly coming from the last ship to be torpedoed.

‘That’s the
Florida Star
,’ Hobson said. ‘I hope she isn’t carrying ammo. And just listen…’

Above the gentle rumble of the engine and the whine of the wind, Yorke could hear a weird, distant moan, deep and distressed, the sound of some great mechanical object in agony.

‘Her siren’s jammed,’ Hobson said. ‘Often does that when a ship’s hit. A derrick or something breaks adrift and swings across the lanyard leading to the siren. The noise is deafening; no one can hear orders.’

Yorke glanced over his shoulder at the long wire lanyard leading from the after side of the bridge to the
Marynal
’s funnel. ‘Ought to stow it during attacks!’ he said. He meant it but made it into a joke; Captain Hobson’s whole life at sea had been spent with the blast of a siren only a quick tug away, to be used in fog and to signal the ship’s intentions to another vessel – one blast meant she was turning to starboard, two to part and three that her engine was going astern. But Yorke, seeing how control would break down entirely if the roaring of a siren prevented any orders being heard, reacted from a different background: in an emergency during a convoy attack it was more important to control your men than signal to another ship…