Down The Hatch (4 page)

“Oh yes, sir.”

“I’m told we’ll have some boffins, too, from some Admiralty Research Establishment or other. You’d better deal with them, Chief. They’re the worst of the lot, of course, but go easy with them. They've been sitting on chairs so long the iron has entered their souls.”

Dagwood relished the last remark on the boffins. He had been a little overpowered by The Bodger’s speech on Billy Bunter et al. but now he was relieved, and delighted, to see in The Bodger the gleam of a dry sardonic sense of humour. “Have we got a press hand-out?”

“Yes, sir. S/M had a couple of thousand run off before we left.”

“Has it got a photograph?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Splendid.” The Bodger began to turn over the papers in the ‘Oozemouth’ pack. “Football against the police. Cricket against the fire brigade. Badminton against King William IV Grammar School. Visit to a brewery. Visit to a chemical works. Visit to an oil refinery. Reception in the Mayor’s parlour. Free tickets to
We Couldn’t Wear Less
at the Intimate Theatre. Darts against the ‘Drunken Duck’. We’re going to have our work cut out, men.”

As The Bodger sifted through the invitations, he began to understand that the City of Oozemouth had exerted itself to be hospitable. There were honorary memberships of yacht clubs, tennis clubs and golf clubs; free tickets for plays, concerts and dances; and a card for every member of the ship’s company entitling him to travel free in municipal transport when in uniform.

“What’s this, supper and classical records with the Misses English-Spence, for two sailors? Have we got any classical music fiends, Dagwood?”

“I think the Radio Electrician and the Chef know a bit about it, sir.”

“The Chef! Good God! Well, there we are. Obviously we’re going to have to wave the old flag until we drop. What time do we get there, Pilot?”

“Nine o’clock tomorrow morning, sir,” said Gavin.

At nine o’clock, in a light drizzle of rain,
Seahorse
reached the fairway buoy and passed up the channel to the City of Oozemouth. In spite of the rain, they were cheered all the way up. The main road which ran close to the water’s edge for part of the way was packed with drenched holiday-makers. People perched on the roofs of cars and leaned from windows to wave. The inner harbour was swarming with sailing boats and pinnaces.
Seahorse
’s black hull moved among them like a shark’s fin in a shoal of minnows. A sodden sea cadet band was playing on the jetty as
Seahorse
secured.

“Zero hour,” said The Bodger. “Synchronize your watches, men.”

“But don’t you get terrible claustrophobia?”

“No ma’am, only thirsty.”

“But I thought you got rum?”

“Yes ma’am, but not enough.”

H.M.S.
Seahorse
was open to the public for the first day and the citizens of Oozemouth were determined to make the most of the first submarine to visit their city since the day the war ended, when a German U-boat stupefied the local coastguards by surfacing next to the fairway buoy and hoisting a white flag. A squad of policemen with linked hands held back a surging, thrusting mass of holiday-makers, sea-cadets, tradesmen and seamen from neighbouring merchantships. Behind the public, mustered in ominous phalanxes, were the First Seven Schools.

Dagwood had spent a lurid two hours on the port harbourmaster’s telephone immediately
Seahorse
had secured. He had discovered that there were forty-two educational establishments in Oozemouth and district, ranging in size and denomination from Oozemouth Secondary Modern School, with over a thousand pupils, to Miss Elizabeth Warbeck’s Academy for Daughters of Gentlewomen in Reduced Circumstances, with ten girls. Bearing in mind The Bodger’s strictures on the subject of Billy Bunter, etc., Dagwood had telephoned them all and every school had said it would like to bring all its pupils. Dagwood had made a swift calculation. Forty-two schools, in six days, made seven schools a day.

The First Seven Schools had arrived and were being held back by the brute force of the police, assisted by depressed-looking men in faded sports-coats and ginger moustaches and large women in tweed suits and pork-pie hats, who were circulating amongst the tide of coloured school caps, squashed velour hats, satchels, hockey-sticks, and straw boaters like cow-hands at a round-up. A gigantic nun, wearing a headdress reminiscent of the Medici, was laying about her with an implement which seemed to The Bodger, watching in horrified fascination from
Seahorse
’s bridge, to be a crozier. Hats, caps and satchels were falling into the harbour in a steady rain and were being retrieved by an old man in a blue sweater and three days’ growth of white stubble. The old man had not had such a day in his small boat since the time the brewer’s lighter came apart at the seams and four dozen barrels of assorted beers went floating out on the ebb tide.

When, suddenly, the Seven Schools broke through the police cordon and swept towards the gangway, the Bodger hurriedly left the bridge and went down to the wardroom where he poured himself a stiff whisky and followed it with another. The only other person in the wardroom was Gavin, who was pretending to study a chart.

“What are you doing, Pilot?” The Bodger asked him.

“Sailing plan for Exercise Lucky Alphonse, sir.”

“Never mind about that just now. Get up top and start showing people round.”

“Yes, sir.”

Shortly there were shrill screams from forward, where Gavin had run into a party of girls from the Secondary Modern School.

Left alone, The Bodger was settling down to enjoy his whisky when he became aware of a rich north country voice resounding from the control room outside.

“Bah goom,” said the voice, “Ah wish Ah had a quid for every time Ah’ve whanked one of these.”

Cautiously, The Bodger peered round the corner of the wardroom door.

The speaker was a tubby cheerful-looking little man in a brand-new checked sports coat and a blue shirt open at the neck. With him was a lady who was plainly his wife and there were four children, two girls who looked like their father and two boys who resembled their mother, standing in a row which reminded The Bodger of a cocoa advertisement. It was clear that the tubby little man needed nobody to show him around. He was fingering the shining handles lovingly and passing his hands knowingly over the air valves. He sniffed, and a delighted smile of nostalgia spread over his face.

“Eeh, it hasn’t changed a bit! Diesel an’ cabbage an’ sweat! “

“
Bert
,” said the wife.

“Maria, Ah was in these things for four years before Ah married you an’ they were the best years of mah life. Ah was Outside Wrecker and Ah remember one day off Sicily we ’ad something loose in the casing an’ the Captain asks for volunteers to go and fix it. So the Engineer and me goes up and fixes it. When we got down again the Captain said to me, Biggs, he said, thart a brave man, Biggs. If an aircraft’d come while ther were up there Ah’d have to have dived without you. And Ah said, No tha wouldn’t, Ah shut off t’panel afore Ah went,
tha couldn’t’ve dived
. He just looks at me and when we got back he recommends me for warrant officer! “

The Bodger enjoyed the story. It had timing, punch, and a moral. Just as The Bodger was returning to his whisky he heard a small girl who was being held up to the after periscope by her mother squeal: “Look mum, it’s in technicolor! “

A black scowl wiped away The Bodger’s indulgent smile. Up on the casing, in steady rain, Petty Officer Humbold, the Second Coxswain, was showing a party of the general public round the upper deck. The painting and care of the outside of the submarine were the Second Coxswain’s own particular responsibility. He was the Torpedo Officer’s right-hand man when the submarine was entering or leaving harbour. He was a broad-shouldered, bullet-headed man with a torpedo beard and a pugnacious manner, as though he might at any moment punch his audience on their respective noses.

“Up there,” said the Second Coxswain, pointing at the gangling figure of Ferguson, the Chief Stoker’s storekeeper, who was standing in oil-skins, boots and gaiters by the forward gangway, “we have a sailor who’s known as the Trot Sentry.”

The small band of the general public gazed at Ferguson, who was alternately blowing on his hands and making marks in a saturated note-book to note the number of visitors boarding the ship.

“He ain’t good-looking, but like me and unlike you he’s only here because he’s gotta be.”

“Why haven’t you got a gun?” asked a tall pale man in a cloth cap and a plastic raincoat.

“Can’t afford one,” said the Second Coxswain shortly. “Forrard, we have the anchor and cable. We’ve got one capstan, that’s that little drum. . . .”

“What’s your job in this submarine, mister?” asked a youth in a black leather jacket and a crash-helmet.

“When the submarine dives, I run forrard as fast as I can and hold its nose. Back here, we’ve got the tower, where the awficer of the watch keeps ’is lonely vigil. . . “

“Don’t you get claustrophobia in a submarine?”

“Only when I laugh,” said the Second Coxswain grimly.

In the engine room, Derek was entertaining the party of boffins. The Admiralty Research Establishment had provided an assorted collection of representatives, who were led by a senior scientist. There were four physicists, two marine biologists, three metallurgists, a specialist in wave formations, and a visiting professor from Harvard.

Derek led the way on to the engine room platform. In front of them were two panels of gauges, one for each engine, and all about them were the valves and systems for starting, controlling and stopping the engines. The party looked around in silence for a few moments.

“Holy Cow,” said the visiting professor from Harvard, at last. “Rock-crushers! “

Derek bristled. He had cherished these engines from their earliest days. He had watched them grow from bare skeleton frames, lying on a shop floor, to thundering monsters capable of driving the submarine across the world. “They’re a little more than that,” he said coldly.

“Tell me,” said the Senior Scientist, “do you go everywhere dived?”

“No. When we’re on passage we go on the surface. In peacetime anyway.”

“Do the engines give you much trouble?” asked one of the metallurgists.

“Only when the Chief E.R.A. has a wash.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It seems to be traditional that the Chief E.R.A. of a submarine never washes at sea. If he does, something goes wrong with the engines to get him dirty again.”

The Wavemaker looked at the tangle of pipes around him. “How do you figure out all these pipe systems? They don’t seem to lead anywhere.”

“Actually, these systems are better than most,” Derek said. “They’ve been planned on a mock-up first, before they were ever put into a submarine. Most submarine systems look as though they were designed by Salvador Dali. Of course, they were put in under the old Olympic System.”

“The
Olympic
System?” The Senior Scientist shook his head.

“The fastest dockyard matie won, sir. Every morning while the submarine was building the men from the various dockyard departments lined up on the dockside holding their bits of pipe. Then when the whistle blew they all doubled on board and the man who got there first had a straight run. The others had to bend their pipes around his. The beauty of the system was that it didn’t matter what size the pipes were. If the electrician was particularly agile he could put his bit of quarter-inch electric cable in first and watch the boiler-maker bend his length of eight-inch diameter special steel piping round it.”

“Really?”
said the Senior Scientist.

“Yes,” said Derek, looking the Wavemaker, who appeared to be sceptical, defiantly in the eye. “Now, gentlemen, was there anything in particular you wished to see?”

One of the physicists had a special request.

“May we see the distiller, please? I’ve been designing a special gauge for them and I would love to see where it’s actually got to go.”

Derek showed them the distiller. The Physicist was thrilled.

“I’m
so
glad we saw that,” he said. “Do you know, I’ve been designing them, and writing letters about them, and giving advice about them for a long time and this is the first time I’ve actually seen one!”

Good God, Derek said to himself.

“How stable are these boats in rough weather?” the Wavemaker asked.

“Pretty good. The fin keeps them more or less dry, not like the older boats with low towers. The stability has to be pretty carefully worked out, of course. We do a trim dive in the dockyard basin after every refit. Occasionally they make a mistake. One boat I went to sea in very nearly capsized. We heeled over to about fifty degrees and stayed there. I thought we’d all had it.”

“Of course,” said the Wavemaker, “in a case like that we’ve got to differentiate between actual
danger
, and mere
discomfort
.”

Derek ground his teeth and repressed an almost overwhelming urge to howl out loud.

“Now, is there anything else, gentlemen?”

The Senior Scientist looked sheepish.

“I wonder. . . .”

“Yes, sir?”

“I wonder. ... It seems silly but ... I wonder if you could explain something I’ve always been puzzled about. . . .”

“Yes, sir?”

“How exactly does a submarine dive?’’

“Well sir, all along the outside of the boat we’ve got a row of very large tanks, called main ballast tanks. They’re open to the sea at the bottom and closed at the top by very large valves, called main vents. When we open the main vents, the sea rushes in at the bottom and the air rushes out at the top, the submarine in effect shrinks in volume, displaces less water and therefore becomes heavier and therefore sinks. When we want to come up again we shut the main vents and blow the water out with compressed air. That makes the boat sort of swell again, displaces more water, become in effect lighter, and up she comes again. All done by Archimedes’ principle, sir.”

“Archimedes?”

“You remember the chap, sir,” said the Wavemaker. “He lived in a barrel.”