The Cruel Sea (1951) (25 page)

Lockhart’s moment of panic did not last.
Compass Rose
had been in fog before, and he had admired Ericson’s calmness and sure control of the situation: now he simply had to follow that example. There was a temptation to sheer away from the convoy, and take an independent line altogether, but that had to be resisted: in a fog, one had to trust other ships to hold their course, and do the same oneself, otherwise it was impossible to retain a clear picture of what was going on. One single ship, losing its nerve and trying to get out of trouble in a hurry, could destroy that picture, and with it the whole tenuous fabric of their safety, and bring about disaster.

At the moment all the ships were comfortably to starboard, and he set to work to plot, inside his head, the varying notes of their sirens. The nearest one, with the deep note, was a big tanker they had been passing when the fog came down: the ship ahead of her made a curious wheezing sound, as if some water had got into her siren. The Commodore’s ship, at the head of the column, had another distinguishable note; and above them all the authoritative voice of the foghorn on the Bar Light Vessel, two miles ahead, supplied as it were the forward edge of the pattern. Beyond that foghorn they could hardly go in safety, for there the channel narrowed to a bare fifty yards: if the fog did not lift, and the convoy had to anchor, it must be done within a time limit of not more than twenty minutes.

Lockhart had the picture in his head, for what it was worth: and beside him in the raw air of the bridge the others – Morell, Baker, Leading-Signalman Wells, the two lookouts – tried to contribute their own quota of watchfulness and interpretation. For the sounds were deceptive – they all knew that well: it was possible that a siren which seemed to be coming clearly from one side was being reflected off the fogbank, and came in fact from some unknown area of danger.
Compass Rose
ran on, over the oily water, with the ghostly company beside her keeping a distance and a formation which could only be guessed at: the rest of the convoy seemed to recede, while the four sounds Lockhart was especially on the alert for – the big tanker, the ship ahead of her, the commodore, and the Bar Light Vessel – succeeded in even rotation, with
Compass Rose
as the fifth element in the pattern. As long as that pattern held, and the fog blew over or dispersed, they were safe.

Suddenly he raised his head, and was conscious of Wells jerking to attention at the same time. A new siren had sounded, an intruder in the pattern, and it seemed to be coming from their port bow – the side away from the convoy, the side that had been clear. ‘Ship to port, sir?’ said Wells tentatively, and they waited in silence for the sound to come again. One – that was the tanker: two – the ship ahead of her: three – the commodore: four – a prolonged wail from the Bar Light Vessel. Then
five
– a wavering blast, nearer now, coming from that safe space to port which had suddenly assumed an imminent danger. Lockhart felt his scalp lifting and prickling as he heard it. It might be anything – a ship coming out, a stray from the convoy, an independent ship creeping along their own path: but it was
there,
somewhere in the fog, somewhere ahead of them and to port, steaming along on God-knows-what course and getting nearer with every second that passed.

He gripped the front of the bridge rail and stared ahead of him. He knew without turning round that the others were watching him: he was the focus now,
Compass Rose
was in his grip, and her safety and perhaps all their lives depended on what he did next. Their own siren sounded, tremendously near and loud, and then the safe four in succession, and then the damned fifth – nearer still, dead ahead or a little to port. He said: ‘Slow ahead!’ surprised at the calmness of his voice: the telegraph clanged, the revolutions purred downwards to a dull throbbing, the slop and thresh of their bow wave died to a gentle forward rustling. But the tension did not die: he felt himself taut and sweating as
Compass Rose
ran on, nearing the edge of the known pattern and nearing also the fifth ship, the doubtful element that could wreck them all. If the commodore did not give the signal for anchoring he
must
do something – either stop dead, or take a wide sheer to port, away from the crowd and the danger: they could not simply run on, swallowing up the safety margin, surrendering foot by foot their only security. He heard Morell by his side cough: the damp air mingled with the sticky sweat under his hair, so that drops ran down his forehead: their own siren boomed out suddenly, just above their heads: he had a quick vision of what might lie a few seconds ahead – the crash, the grinding of wood and metal, the wrecked bows, the cries of men trapped or hurt in the mess decks: he felt all the others watching him, trusting and yet not trusting, hoping that he could meet this inexorable crisis – and then suddenly the port lookout called out: ‘Ship to port, sir!’ and forty yards away, in the fog that suddenly cleared and the sunshine that suddenly broke through, a small coaster slid past them and down the side of the convoy. He felt a great surge of relief as the last wisps of fog blew away, showing him the lines of ships still intact and the Bar Light Vessel riding clear on the smooth water. As suddenly as the danger had come, it had been taken away again. It was a full reprieve: he had done his best, and the best had been good enough, and now
Compass Rose
steamed on with the rest of them, towards the familiar landmarks of home.

An hour later they were in the thick of the Mersey traffic, leading the slow and stately progress upriver to the convoy anchorage. The long line of ships stretched behind them, deep-laden, travel-stained, proud and yet matter-of-fact: ships they had guarded for many days, ships they knew well by sight from this and earlier convoys, ships they had cursed for straggling or admired for skilful handling. It was another convoy – Lockhart had lost count by now, but perhaps it was their sixteenth, perhaps their twentieth; another great company of ships, safe home with hundreds of men and thousands of tons of supplies, after running the gauntlet of the weather and the worst that the enemy could do. Perhaps pride
was
the keynote, pride and a sober thankfulness: the supplies were needed, the men were precious, and their own
Compass Rose
was a well-loved hostage to fortune . . . Wells said suddenly: ‘Commodore calling up, sir!’ and there was silence on the bridge as he took and acknowledged the message from the big freighter that led the convoy. Then Wells turned from the signal lamp.

‘From the Commodore, sir. “Nice to see those Liver birds again. Thanks and goodbye”.’

Lockhart looked upriver, towards the great gilded birds that topped the Liver Building in the heart of Liverpool. He shared the Commodore’s sentiment, down to the last tip of their wings . . .

‘Make: “They look bigger and better every time. Goodbye to you”,’ he dictated to Wells. He waited while the message was despatched and then, with a curious sense of disappointment, he gave the helm order which took
Compass Rose
in a wide sheer away from the convoy and towards their own berth at the oiler. The job was done, the release was official, but to part company now was like surrendering a foster child one had learned to love . . . Earlier he had been worried about manoeuvring
Compass Rose
up to the oiler, but now he took her alongside with a careless skill, as if he had done it every day for the past year. After the weight of the last few days, after the ordeal of the fog, there seemed nothing that he could not do. When finally he gave the order: ‘Finished with main engines’, and went down to report to Ericson, he felt at least ten years older, and triumphant in his maturity.

There was the life at sea, crude, self-contained, sometimes startling: there was the tender life of home, when leave came round: and there was the medium world of life in harbour, when they rested from one convoy and prepared for the next one. Of the three, harbour routine gave them perhaps the most vivid sense of being one unit of a complex weapon engaged in a huge and mortal battle.

Gladstone Dock, where nearly all the Western Approaches escorts roosted, had developed in two years into a vast, concentrated hive of naval activity. Strategically, the Battle of the Atlantic was controlled from the underground headquarters in Liver Buildings: down in Gladstone Dock, and in other smaller docks grouped along the waterfront, the ships that fought the battle, the crude pawns that did the work, lay in tiers, three and four abreast along the quayside, salty, shabby, overworked, overdriven; fresh and wet from the encounter, resting thankfully, or waiting for the next tide to take them out again . . . They looked workmanlike, without much elegance, but tough and dependable: they were close packed, stern to stern, their masts reaching for the sky, their level fo’c’sles towering over the jetty – the jetty which was itself crowded with sheds and training huts and an untidy jumble of gear and spare parts and oil drums and newly delivered stores. But it was the ships which drew and focused the eye: the lean grey destroyers, the stocky sloops and corvettes, the trawlers that swept the fairway – this was the whole interlocking team that had the battle in its hands. Here in Gladstone Dock was the hard shell for the convoys, the armour of the Atlantic: it did not shine, it was dented here and there, it was unquestionably spread thin and strained to the limit of endurance; but it had stood the test of two brutal years, and it would hold as long as the war held, and for five minutes longer.

The men who manned these ships were cast in the same mould. For sailors, the Battle of the Atlantic was becoming a private war: if you were in it, you knew all about it – you knew how to watchkeep on filthy nights, how to surmount an aching tiredness, how to pick up survivors, how to sink submarines, how to bury the dead, and how to die without wasting anyone’s time. You knew, though not in such detail as your own particular part of the job, the overall plan of the battle, and the way it was shaping. You knew, for example, that at this moment the score was steadily running against the convoys; you knew by heart the monthly totals of sinkings, the record and the quality of other ships in other escort groups, the names of U-boat commanders who had especially distinguished themselves by their skill or ruthlessness. The whole battle was now a very personal matter, and for sailors involved in it there was a pride and a comradeship which nothing could supplant. For they were the experts, they were fighting it together, they had learnt what it took from a man, and the mortal fury which, increasing from month to month, tested whomever was sucked in, from the highest to the lowest, down to the fine limits of his endurance.

This was especially true of the men who sailed in corvettes, the smallest ships loose in the wild Atlantic at this desperate stage: when they foregathered in harbour after the tough convoy, the triumphant attack, the miserable loss and slaughter, they were very conscious of their calling . . . They read about themselves in the newspapers, they quoted the ludicrous headlines which lagged so far behind the truth: but deep within himself each man knew that the public reputation, the corvette label, was a reflection of something which, when isolated at sea, always confronted him with a mixture of triumph and horror, which was a stark and continuous challenge, which really did take a man to survive . . . When a sailor said: ‘I’m in corvettes,’ he might be alert for the answering: ‘That must be tough – I believe they roll their guts out’: but whatever the answer, whatever the scale of sympathy or incomprehension, the truth kept him company, and in his private mind he could be proud of it.

Alongside each other, in harbour, one wardroom visited another: a taste of someone else’s gin and a new angle to flotilla gossip enlivened the set routine and the waiting for action. But there was little to distinguish between the men themselves: whatever the ship, they were the same kind of people – amateurs who had graduated to a professional skill and toughness. When Ericson looked round his own wardroom, he saw in theory a journalist, a barrister, a bank clerk, and a junior accountant; but these labels now were meaningless – they were simply his officers, the young men who ran his ship and who had adapted themselves to this new life so completely that they had shed everything of their past save the accent it had given them. It was the same in other ships: all the corvettes were officered on these lines: the new experimental craft had taken their men to school with them, and had developed swiftly and evenly into units remarkable for their dependability and essential to the struggle. It was no wonder that, when they met and relaxed between convoys, these young men all exhibited, like a brand name, the disdainful confidence of the elect. To sail in corvettes was a special kind of test and a special distinction, and none could know it better than themselves.

It coloured – it was bound to colour – their feelings for other men who were not in the battle. During her time in harbour,
Compass Rose
had many contacts with the shore staff, who supervised the continuous programme of gunnery and asdic training which filled most of the working days between convoys; and there were many visitors on board – experts of all kinds to check their equipment, signalling and engineering staff, liaison characters, religious performers: men with excellent reasons for coming aboard, and men with none at all save a militant thirst and the chance of slaking it at any one of a dozen floating bars . . . There was indeed a very wide range of callers, and it was fair to say that most of them were welcome, since most of them were hardworking, helpful, genuine, and wistfully honest when they proclaimed their longing to go to sea instead of sitting out the war in an office job ashore. But there were others, nibbling and sipping at the outside of the real core; professional callers, who could be counted on to come aboard at eleven in the morning with some transparent excuse, anchor themselves in the wardroom with a glass in one hand and the bottle convenient to the other, and stay there with so established an air that the final choice lay between closing the bar or asking them to lunch . . . Some of them acted a part, and the talk would run on their eagerness to go to sea, if only they could shake off this infernal catarrh; others did not even bother to do this, and exhibited only the complacency which went naturally with a soft job, plenty of spare time, and a prescriptive right to scrounge free drinks for several hours a day. When one was recovering from two or three weeks of vile weather at sea, with perhaps a rough convoy thrown in, and the memory of men gasping out their lives in the very wardroom where one sat, it was particularly hard to be civil to a man who seemed to regard the whole thing as an agreeable frolic, and his own soft role in it as the reward of a natural talent.