Down The Hatch

Copyright ©1961 by John Winton

Salvador Dali tells a fable of a sardine on the seabed who, seeing a submarine pass overhead, says to his children: “There goes our revenge: a great tin made of sheet-iron in which men, covered in oil, are held inside, pressed against one another.”

The pictures on the walls of the Admiral’s private office were all mementoes of a long career in submarines. By the door there was a group photograph of his submarine training class: three rows of grinning sub-lieutenants and a bearded training officer. Next to it was the Admiral’s first command coming to a buoy in Portsmouth Harbour; her elementary wireless aerials and angular conning tower had not been seen at sea for many years. More submarines followed, a string of them, growing longer and sleeker through the years. The last picture of the sequence was the barrel-sided submarine depot-ship which had been the Admiral’s last sea-going command. The other pictures were a mixed collection: a periscope photograph of a broken-backed Italian cruiser sinking against a pale Mediterranean sunset; a fox-terrier wearing a sailor’s cap; and a startling picture of a submarine returning from her last patrol, flying the Jolly Roger, with her ballast tanks ripped in great gashes where a Japanese destroyer’s screws had raked her.

The Admiral was not a sentimental man but he had held on to his pictures. They had travelled the world with him, survived all his removals and, he hoped, would go with him into retirement.

The Admiral himself was something of a celebrity in the Submarine Service. He had married very young and to the envy of his contemporaries, capturing by far the best-looking of the Admiral’s daughters to come out between the wars. He had had a stormy career, so stormy that many of his friends regarded it as a miracle that he had ever achieved the rank of Rear-Admiral; his enemies attributed it to a triumph of matter over mind. He had trampled roughshod over his opponents. He had never toned down his scorn for superiors he thought incompetent. Tact and finesse were unknown to him; he had achieved everything by brute driving force. His tactlessness had led him to one court martial, two D.S.O.s, and three lung-splitting cheers from every ship’s company he had ever commanded. He was of the school who learned about men rather than machines and who put charity before technique. But now the old fires were damped. The Admiral was left with a row of medal ribbons and his pictures. He often thought of retiring from the Navy and sitting for an agricultural constituency in the West of England.

The Admiral’s favourite view was from his office window (he had coveted the view since he was a sub-lieutenant). From where he was standing he looked out over the submarines where they lay at their trots. The nearest submarine was charging her batteries; a plume of spray and steam rose from her after-casing and the Admiral could hear the thumping of her main engines against his window. Ahead of her another submarine was loading torpedoes. The Admiral could see the dull blue shape of a torpedo being lowered into her hull.

The furthest submarine was the longest and largest of all. She overlapped her neighbours at both ends. Her tall fin soared above the stubby towers of the rest. She was painted dead black except for the white identification numbers on her fin and she was plainly brand new. The Admiral looked at her like a father recognizing his favourite daughter.

The Admiral allowed himself to gloat over her for a minute and then, as though struck by a painful memory, scowled and turned away from the window. The Captain who was standing on the other side of the desk braced himself apprehensively.

Captain S/M was the Admiral’s opposite in temperament. He was what was known in the service as “a charmer”. He was in command of the submarine squadron which operated from the base and he was well used to the Admiral’s moods. He had often been the sounding board for the Admiral’s hobby-horses. But it was not often that he was so peremptorily summoned into the presence. Captain S/M guessed that the Admiral must have something pretty serious on his mind.

“Sometimes,” the Admiral began, sadly, “I really wonder why we bother. We’ve all fought for years to get the Navy a new submarine instead of a new block of offices. We’ve fought, and beaten, every government department. We've fought every branch of the Navy. We’ve fought everybody from the Ministry of Pensions to the Y.M.C.A. to get this damned submarine. At last we got her approved. We got her designed, we got her started and now, by God, we’ve even got her finished. In spite of sympathy strikes, wildcat strikes, token strikes and every other bloody kind of strike. At last we got H.M.S.
Seahorse
, God bless her and all who sail in her. Admittedly she’s obsolete. She was obsolete before she was even designed. That’s not the point. The point is that we’ve survived the worst the trade unions can do, we’ve survived two changes of government, three changes of First Lord and four financial crises to get her. And now that she’s finished her work-up and is ready to join the fleet, what happens? We find we can’t choose a captain for her. The whole thing is taken out of our hands. We get some passed-over bumpkin nobody’s ever heard of. . . .”

“Oh, not exactly, sir,” Captain S/M put in tactfully. “He was my Torpedo Officer in my first command.”

“Has he ever commanded a submarine himself?”

“He had an old V-boat just after the war, sir.”

“Exactly! An old
V-boat!
Seahorse
is not an old V-boat! She’s the best submarine we’ve got now and the best we’re likely to have for a damn long time! What’s this man been doing all these years?”

“I gather he was training cadets for a while, sir. Then he had a job in the Admiralty and one in Bath. And he was Jimmy of a cruiser in the Far East for a commission, sir.”

“Why did he leave submarines?”

Captain S/M blushed. “I understand it was because he wrote ‘Quoth the Raven’ in the visitors’ book after dining with the Admiral, sir.”

The Admiral’s manner softened. It was a coup worthy of himself when young.

“Who was the Admiral then?”

“Admiral Creepwood, sir.”

“Ah yes, I know him well. And Flora too, come to that. Her curried shrimps once gave me the worst attack of Malta Dog I’ve ever had. But that’s beside the point. This man may be an excellent trainer and a first-class pen-pusher. He may be an excellent First Lieutenant in a cruiser. He might even be something of a gastronome but why, why send him here to command
Seahorse
? I’ve got a list of submarine captains as long as my arm, any one of whom could take her.”

“Sir, can’t you . . . .?”

“I’ve tried, I’ve tried. But Their Lordships are adamant. But why, that’s what I cannot understand?”

“It may have been, sir. . .” Captain S/M hesitated.

“May have been what?”

“It may have been your remarks to the First Lord about new blood in submarines, sir.”

“But I meant the submarines, not the officers! Oh my God,” said the Admiral plaintively, “when will I learn not to talk to politicians like that? Their minds just don’t work like other people’s.”

“I think this man will be all right, sir, when he gets back into practice.”

“He’d better,” said the Admiral.

The new Commanding Officer of H.M.S.
Seahorse
was at that moment walking along the jetty towards his submarine. He was a stout, red-faced man with a shock of black hair which was just beginning to go grey. He walked with an unconcerned but hopeful air, as though he expected at any minute to be offered a drink. His name was Lieutenant-Commander Robert Bollinger Badger, D.S.C., R.N., but he was known throughout the Navy as The Artful Bodger.

Nobody looking at The Bodger’s jaunty step and nonchalantly-pursed lips could have guessed that inwardly The Bodger was as nervous as a frightened kitten. As Captain S/M had told the Admiral, it was several years since The Bodger had commanded a submarine and now, by some ironical twist of circumstance (The Bodger had long ago stopped trying to unravel the mystical processes which decided officers’ appointments in the Navy) he had once more been given command of a submarine. Furthermore, his new command was not just any submarine, but the latest, the fastest and the most expensive the Navy possessed.

Looking at
Seahorse
, The Bodger could see that he had been entrusted with a thoroughbred. Her lines rose smoothly from her low tapered stern to her high flared bows. Her sides had none of the gratings and awkward projections of older submarines. Her fin seemed to grow from her body in a clean proportioned sweep. Even The Bodger’s predecessor, a venerable submarine captain who had been appointed to stand by
Seahorse
while she was building because he had an unsurpassed way with dockyard officials, had been moved to remark that she seemed a reasonable design.

The Bodger was pleased to notice that the trot sentry was ready to salute him and was wearing a clean pair of gaiters. As he mounted the narrow gangway, The Bodger felt that, after an unconscionable length of time in the wilderness, he was coming home at last.

The rest of
Seahorse
’s officers were waiting in the wardroom. They had all met the new Captain and they were agreed that he seemed a reasonable fellow but they knew that first appearances in submarines often turned out to be wrong. They realized, equally, that their social and professional lives during the coming commission depended to a very large extent upon the Captain’s personality. The history of the Submarine Service abounded in stories of the brilliant and kindly men who had commanded submarines. But there were also darker tales of evil-tempered or eccentric men who had driven their officers, and particularly their First Lieutenants, over the edge of breakdown. The wardroom were well aware that, for them, the new Captain was more powerful than Caesar and more terrible than Jehovah.

The Bodger dexterously flicked his cap so that it slid along the chart-table and wedged itself behind the echo-sounder. Then he parted the wardroom curtains and, while the rest stood up, sat down in “Father’s Chair’’, at the end of the table.

Seahorse
’s wardroom was typical of many in the Submarine Service. A central table was flanked by seats, upholstered in blue plastic material, which could be converted into bunks. The bulkheads were panelled in light polished wood which was broken up in several places to allow passage for pipes and valve handwheels. The spaces between the bunks were fitted with cupboards and drawers and, along the top of one bulkhead, a bookcase. A barometer and a clock were set into the woodwork above Father’s Chair and a deep depth-gauge faced them on the opposite bulkhead. The whole space was slightly smaller than the driver’s cab of a long-distance locomotive and, at sea, provided the living, eating and sleeping space for six men.

“About time the bar was opened,” The Bodger said.

The wine cupboard was quickly opened and glasses and bottles set out on the table. The wardroom noted the remark; the Captain’s policy about the bar was vital.

The Bodger raised his bubbling glass.

“Here’s to us. Whores like us.”

“Cheers, sir,” said the rest of the wardroom, cautiously.

“Well now,” said The Bodger. “I’ve managed to thrash out most of our programme for this term with the Staff Office. It’s not very exciting but it could be much worse. Tomorrow, we’re going to sea for exercises by ourselves. This is for my benefit, to give me a chance to get a grip on things again. But if anyone has any ideas about any particular evolution, now’s your chance. How about you, Number One? Have you got anything you feel strongly about?”

“Not really, sir, though we might have another go at things like putting out a fire in the battery, sir. We weren’t too good at that during the inspection.”

“Good, we’ll certainly do that.”

Frederick Wilfred Garnet de Zouche Burnham, the First Lieutenant, once delighted his kindergarten teacher by confiding that he wanted to be an angel when he grew up. The kindergarten teacher, a kindly soul, had thought it a heavenly idea. The family, however, had thought differently. By tradition only the second son joined the Church. Young Wilfred, the third son, was therefore delivered, scarcely protesting, up to Dartmouth at the age of thirteen. He was a shy, fragile child with long fair hair, a thin nose and green eyes. He had quickly acquired the nickname of Vera, a name which still returned to haunt him whenever members of his term were gathered together. But the boy with the ethereal looks and the frail physique had won a reputation for survival; he had served with three of the toughest and most unpleasant captains in the Navy List and he had never been logged nor goaded into losing his temper. The First Lieutenant of Wilfred’s first submarine had been driven into the arms of the psychiatrists by a captain who asked him, every morning at breakfast throughout a two-year commission, whether he felt well. Wilfred had watched and noted and said nothing. The Bodger suspected that his new First Lieutenant had qualities of withdrawal which made him immune to the boorish habits of people whom he considered his inferiors.