The Cruel Sea (1951) (19 page)

For they
were
free of Bennett: he faded away into a dilatory background of hospital boards and recurrent examinations, and they never saw him again. Lockhart’s promotion was confirmed, not without some misgivings, by Western Approaches Command; and the new officer who arrived to fill the gap, one Sub-Lieutenant Baker, was junior to Ferraby and, if his hesitant air was anything to go by, likely to remain so. The new team assembled and settled down, making of
Compass Rose
a different ship altogether. The wardroom was now a pleasant place where they could relax and feel at ease, without a morose and critical eye singling them out for comment: after six months of suspicion and the most oafish kind of tyranny, it made for a happy freedom which they did not want to abuse. The same feeling spread throughout the ship, filtering down to the lower deck, where Bennett’s crude methods had aroused the most resentment and the strongest reaction in terms of idling and shirking: the idea that Lockhart, though no fool, was a better man to work for, produced, as it often does, more work and not less. There were of course, to start with, one or two efforts at taking advantage of the more reasonable rule, notably by liberty men who returned on board late and produced elaborate excuses for doing so; but after one conspicuous offender, claiming to have been involved in a boarding house fire, had been informed by Lockhart (who had taken the trouble to find out) that the night in question had been the first one for four months on which the Liverpool Fire Brigade had not been called out, and had then been sent to detention by the Captain, the number of men ready to ‘try it on’ showed a steep decline.

Ericson, observing the general improvement, was pleased with his experiment. He had gone to a good deal of trouble to get Lockhart’s appointment confirmed, in the face of a stubborn sort of disbelief ashore, and the trouble was worth while. Both he and
Compass Rose
had gained something which might be even more valuable in the near future.

There was one job of Lockhart’s which had been his ever since he had joined
Compass Rose
and had admitted, in a moment of inattention, that one of his great-uncles had once been a surgeon at Guy’s Hospital; and that was the job of ship’s doctor. So far it had involved him in nothing more than treating toothache, removing a splinter from a man’s eye, and advising, with no sort of experience to guide him, on a stubborn case of lice-infestation: all the serious cases went to the Naval Hospital ashore, and as yet nothing in this class had ever occurred at sea. Vaguely he realised that this would not always be so: other corvettes had had casualties to deal with, after ships in convoy had been torpedoed, and sooner or later he himself would be faced with an experience he was little fitted for. It was a thought he shied away from, because he had a real doubt as to how he would meet the ordeal: nothing in his life, not even a casual motor accident, had brought him in contact with blood and violence, and he feared a reaction which might be ineffective or foolish. ‘Fainting at the sight of blood’ – the stock phrase sometimes occurred to him, with a discomforting twinge of anxiety. Suppose that was what happened, suppose he could not help it . . . The job of doctor was the only one on board which, in moments of introspection, he wanted to relinquish.

But so far it had been a sinecure: so far, their most challenging medical problem had been sufficiently beyond his scope for him to be justified in rejecting it.

The occasion had been the start of a convoy, when the line of ships was forming up after the slow progress downriver. A nearby tanker had started signalling to
Compass Rose,
and Wells, receiving the message, passed it on to the Captain.

‘From the tanker, sir,’ he said. ‘”Have you a doctor on board or can you give medical advice?”’

Ericson looked at Lockhart, who was also up on the bridge. ‘How about it, Number One?’

‘I’ll have a crack at it, sir,’ said Lockhart. ‘I can’t do much harm at this distance.’

‘All right.’ He turned to Wells. ‘Make to them: “Medical advice available. What are symptoms?”’

There was a pause, while the lamps flickered again. Then Wells, reading the reply, suddenly said: ‘Oh!’ in a startled voice. It was the first time Lockhart had ever seen him surprised, and he wondered what could be coming. With no sort of expression, Wells gave the ‘Message received’ signal, and then said: ‘Reply, sir: “Tight foreskin”.’

There was a reflective silence on the bridge.

‘Sir,’ said Lockhart, ‘I honestly don’t know.’

‘Does you credit,’ answered Ericson. It was one of those remarks he occasionally made, which endeared him to Lockhart as something more than a good Captain. ‘I don’t think we have any experts on board, have we?’

‘No, sir,’ said Lockhart.

‘”Afraid we cannot help your patient”,’ Ericson dictated to Wells. ‘”Will ask destroyer, which has a doctor”. Send that off . . . Fine start for a twenty-one day convoy,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘That’ll teach him not to go to
that
address again.’

The subsequent exchange of signals with
Viperous
was of a kind which does not figure in the official log: at the end of it, Lockhart had less inclination to continue his medical career than ever before. Later, in mid-Atlantic, they inquired after the casualty, and received the answer: ‘Patient enjoyed a good night.’

‘We know that,’ was Morell’s dry comment. ‘It was the original trouble.’

And then, suddenly, being the doctor wasn’t funny any more.

Dunkirk, that fabulous flight and triumph, was their signal for joining battle: from then onwards, almost every convoy they escorted suffered some sort of attack, either from U-boats or aircraft, and the loss of ships began to be an inevitable part of their seagoing. Dunkirk, as it was bound to, made a great difference to the balance of things in the Atlantic: the operation itself drew off many ships, destroyers and corvettes alike, from regular convoy escort, and some of them were lost, others damaged, and still others had to remain in home waters when it was over, to be on hand in case of invasion. The shortage of escorts at this stage was ludicrous: even with the arrival of fifty obsolescent destroyers which America had now made available to the Allies, convoys sailed out into the Atlantic with only a thin token screen between them and the growing force of U-boats. When, after Dunkirk, the Royal Navy turned its attention to the major battle again, it was to find control of the battlefield threatened by a ruthless assault, which quickened and grew with every month that passed.

There was another factor in the altered account. The map now showed them a melancholy and menacing picture: with Norway gone, France gone, Ireland a dubious quantity on their doorstep, and Spain an equivocal neutral, nearly the whole European coastline, from Narvik to Bordeaux, was available to U-boats and, more important still, as airbases for long-range aircraft. Aircraft could now trail a convoy far out into the Atlantic, calling up U-boats to the attack as they circled out of range: the liaison quickly showed a profit disastrous to the Allies. In the three months that followed Dunkirk, over two hundred ships were sent to the bottom by these two weapons in combination, and the losses continued at something like fifty ships a month till the end of the year. Help was on the way – new weapons, more escorts, more aircraft: but help did not come in time, for many ships and men, and for many convoys that made port with great gaps in their ranks.

It was on one of these bad convoys, homeward bound near Iceland, that
Compass Rose
was blooded.

When the alarm bell went, just before midnight, Ferraby left the bridge where he had been keeping the first watch with Baker, and made his way aft towards his depth-charges. It was he who had rung the bell, as soon as the noise of aircraft and a burst of tracer bullets from the far side of the convoy indicated an attack; but though he had been prepared for the violent clanging and the drumming of feet that followed it, he could not control a feeling of sick surprise at the urgency which now possessed the ship, in its first alarm for action. The night was calm, with a bright three-quarter-moon which bathed the upper deck in a cold glow, and showed them the nearest ships of the convoy in hard revealing outline; it was a perfect night for what he
knew
was coming, and to hurry down the length of
Compass Rose
was like going swiftly to the scaffold. He knew that if he spoke now there would be a tremble in his voice, he knew that full daylight would have shown his face pale and his lips shaking; he knew that he was not really ready for this moment, in spite of the months of training and the gradually sharpening tension. But the moment was here, and somehow it had to be faced.

Wainwright, the young torpedoman, was already on the quarterdeck, clearing away the release gear on the depth-charges, and as soon as Wainwright spoke – even though it was only the three words ‘Closed up, sir,’ – Ferraby knew that he also was consumed by nervousness . . . He found the fact heartening, in a way he had not expected: if his own fear of action were the common lot, and not just a personal and shameful weakness, it might be easier to cure in company. He took a grip of his voice, said: ‘Get the first pattern ready to drop,’ and then, as he turned to check up on the depth-charge crews, his eye was caught by a brilliant firework display on their beam.

The attacking aircraft was now flying low over the centre of the convoy, pursued and harried by gunfire from scores of ships at once. The plane could not be seen, but her swift progress could be followed by the glowing arcs of tracer bullets which swept like a huge fan across the top of the convoy. The uproar was prodigious – the plane screaming through the darkness, hundreds of guns going at once, one or two ships sounding the alarm on their sirens: the centre of the convoy, with everyone blazing away at the low-flying plane and not worrying about what else was in the line of fire, must have been an inferno. Standing in their groups aft, close to the hurrying water, they watched and waited, wondering which way the plane would turn at the end of her run: on the platform above them the two-pounder gun’s crew, motionless and helmeted against the night sky, were keyed ready for their chance to fire. But the chance never came, the waiting belts of ammunition remained idle: something else forestalled them.

It was as if the monstrous noise from the convoy must have a climax, and the climax could only be violent. At the top of the centre column, near the end of her run, the aircraft dropped two bombs: one of them fell wide, raising a huge pluming spout of water which glittered in the moonlight, and the other found its mark. It dropped with an iron clang on some ship which they could not see – and they knew that now they would never see her: for after the first explosion there was a second one, a huge orange flash which lit the whole convoy and the whole sky at one ghastly stroke. The ship – whatever size she was – must have disintegrated on the instant; they were left with the evidence – the sickening succession of splashes as the torn pieces of the ship fell back into the sea, covering and fouling a mile-wide circle, and the noise of the aircraft disappearing into the darkness, a receding tail of sound to underline this fearful destruction.

‘Must have been ammunition,’ said someone in the darkness, breaking the awed and compassionate silence. ‘Poor bastards.’

‘Didn’t know much about it. Best way to die.’

You fool, thought Ferraby, trembling uncontrollably: you fool, you fool, no one wants to die . . .

From the higher vantage point of the bridge, Ericson had watched everything; he had seen the ship hit, the shower of sparks where the bomb fell, and then, a moment afterwards, the huge explosion that blew her to pieces. In the shocked silence that followed, his voice giving a routine helm order was cool and normal: no one could have guessed the sadness and the anger that filled him, to see a whole crew of men like himself wiped out at one stroke. There was nothing to be done: the aircraft was gone, with this frightful credit, and if there were any men left alive – which was hardly conceivable –
Sorrel,
the stern escort, would do her best for them. It was so quick, it was so brutal . . . He might have thought more about it, he might have mourned a little longer, if a second stroke had not followed swiftly; but even as he raised his binoculars to look at the convoy again, the ship they were stationed on, a hundred yards away, rocked to a sudden explosion and then, on the instant, heeled over at a desperate angle.

This time, a torpedo . . . Ericson heard it: and even as he jumped to the voice-pipe to increase their speed and start zigzagging, he thought: if that one came from outside the convoy, it must have missed us by a few feet. Inside the asdic hut, Lockhart heard it, and started hunting on the danger side, without further orders: that was a routine, and even at this moment of surprise and crisis, the routine still ruled them all. Morell, on the fo’c’sle, heard it, and closed up his gun’s crew again and loaded with star shell: down in the wheelhouse, Tallow heard it, and gripped the wheel tighter and called out to his quartermasters: ‘Watch that telegraph, now!’ and waited for the swift orders that might follow. Right aft, by the depth-charges, Ferraby heard it, and shivered: he glanced downwards at the black water rushing past them, and then at the stricken ship which he could see quite clearly, and he longed for some action in which he could lose himself and his fear. Deep down in the engine room, Chief E.R.A. Watts heard it best of all: it came like a hammer blow, hitting the ship’s side a great splitting crack, and when, a few seconds afterwards, the telegraph rang for an increase of speed, his hand was on the steam valve already. He knew what had happened, he knew what might happen next. But it was better not to think of what was going on outside: down here, encased below the waterline, they must wait, and hope, and keep their nerve.