The Lion at Sea (3 page)

The weather had grown considerably colder now and the wind rippled the surface of the grey-green sea between the Isle of Wight and the mainland, and sent up little showering cascades of spray as waves broke against the hulls of those ships still gathered in the anchorage. The wild screeching of birds gave the day a feeling of heaviness, and the sky, pearl-coloured with overcast, arched bleakly overhead, its sombreness reflected in the waters of the Solent.

A sprinkle of rain came on the wind as Kelly took his boat away from
Huguenot
’s
side, its polished brass winking, its stanchions decorated with turks’ heads and other tiddly items of cordwork. ‘A ship is judged by her boats,’ he’d been told very early in his career. ‘So tend to your boat’s wants as carefully as you would to your mistress’. And see to it that to your eyes she is just as beautiful, because a mid who cares for his boat and manoeuvres it satisfactorily will invariably behave with equal credit on the bridge of a ship.’ He had remembered it well.

In the distance, he could see the dreadnoughts of the Third Battle Squadron beginning to move away in line ahead, great steel fortresses, powerful and swift but, because of their sheer weight, so ungainly in the turn they were known as the Wobbly Eights. It was said they needed all of a mile to change course and Kelly stared at them from the pinnace, hoping he’d never have to serve in one. The spit and polish were said to be formidable.

Jacky Fisher had built them during his years as First Lord. He had wanted a big ship of over 17,000 tons, capable of 25 knots with twelve inches of armour plate and twelve 12-inch guns, and there they were, right in front of him. In fact, they’d turned out to be somewhat heavier than Fisher had wished, had only eleven inches of armour plate and ten 12-inchers instead of twelve, and could do only 21 knots, but at least no one had wasted time. From the laying down of the keel to the launching of the first one, it had taken only a matter of months.

While most of jingoistic Britain thought them masterpieces, however, the people who served in them were not so sure. They threw too much smoke over the gun control and above all they were wet in rough weather. It was even claimed that they’d been too hurriedly thrown together and that all that had been done was produce a new kind of ship on which all the other powers were now improving. Admiral Beresford argued that Britain had declared herself to be the bully of the seas, while others had noted that to pay for the super-ships Fisher had sent a hundred and fifty lesser vessels to the breakers on the grounds that they were old and outdated and could neither fight nor run away, seeing naval warfare, his critics said, only as a fleet action and forgetting that in places as far away as the Pacific, India and Australia, even old tubs would be useful if there were trouble. Only Verschoyle was eager to be posted to a dreadnought – and preferably to the flagship, spit, polish and all. ‘That’s where a chap will be noticed,’ he said.

Kelly frowned. He didn’t see himself in a dreadnought or a battle cruiser. Destroyers probably. Sleek, swift, black-painted little ships that in bad weather were hell to be in, uncomfortable little ships in which even a mere lop on the ocean made eating and drinking difficult, and bad weather could dump the whole wardroom – officers, chairs, fiddles, crockery, glass, stewards and everything – underneath the table in a swill of soup and sea water. They were cramped little vessels where cabins were like rabbit hutches so filled with pipes it was almost impossible to stand upright, but they were also always the hounds when it came to a chase, always the first into action and last out; and a destroyer captain was noticed not for his manners but for his initiative and skill with a ship, while his very duties placed him as far as possible from interfering senior officers.

The wind was cold, punching into Kelly’s face and sending spray over the canopy to clatter against the funnel. Just ahead of him he could see Verschoyle in the petrol pinnace bumping in the swell. Verschoyle, being Verschoyle, had been carrying personal messages to the admiral all day while Kelly Maguire, being Kelly Maguire, was merely carrying mail.

Thick smoke was pouring from the pinnace’s funnel and the stoker put his head out of the hatch to sniff the wind before dumping a bucketful of ash overboard. The wind caught it, to scatter it over a wide area on the lee side of the boat in a greasy grey patch.

‘Any more of that?’ Kelly demanded.

‘No sir.’ The stoker looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

‘Well, if there is, save it for the return journey. I wouldn’t like any to drift through the admiral’s scuttles.’

A ship in the distance was flashing a signal and Kelly read it carefully for practice, then another slash of cold water came over and he realised his attention had wandered and he was not watching the boat’s head.

Perhaps no one’s thoughts were entirely on the job in hand. The fleet review was still too much in the mind. It was the biggest thing that had ever happened to Kelly Maguire and he had happily ditched his complaints in a wave of enthusiasm and patriotism. It was uncomplicated, unsophisticated, probably even unintelligent, and with his mother’s rebellious Irish blood coursing through his veins, perhaps even treacherous.

Being the son of Catherine de la Trouve Kelly, it had taken him a long time to feel at ease with the unquestioning royalism of the Navy. And even more so to feel at one with its strange attitude of putting ceremonial before efficiency. He had been brought up to believe that the Navy was a weapon, but it hadn’t taken him long to realise that the chief concern of many of the senior officers was less how to learn how to use that weapon in time of war than to hold to the Victorian ideal of keeping it spotless. ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’ seemed to be the motto of most admirals, and he had once heard his father boast how he’d made a habit of tossing practice shells overboard rather than spoil the paintwork by firing the guns.

It was at that moment, in fact, that he realised for the first time why his father had never flown his flag as an admiral. He belonged to that old navy Fisher had tried to change. He was a great believer in the fact that so long as the Navy simply existed, Britain need never tremble, and with the great fleet dispersing in the increasing rain, he suddenly seemed to Kelly as out-of-date as the dodo. He was probably even the reason why Kelly had never had any particular desire to go to sea. At thirteen, when it had all started, in fact, he’d had no particular wish to go anywhere at all, but, because his father had finally managed to scrape home to flag rank and because his elder brother, Gerald, had followed his grandfather into the army, the step had become inevitable. He had spent hours when the move had been announced sulking in a bitter resentment against an institution which had seemed in the past to add little to his life or even to that of his mother, who had always resented his father’s absences and the fact that he was undoubtedly enjoying his life in foreign ports while she had to bear the burden of the debts he ran up. Kelly had long since even suspected there had been other women in his father’s background – though they were never mentioned – and for some reason had always blamed this on the fact that his father was a sailor and took his pleasures where he found them.

The rain was heavy now and Kelly spat it from his lips as he saw the water round the flagship crowded with boats. With nothing more urgent than the mail, they might have to wait a long time, and he saw one of the seamen in front of him cursing their ill-luck.

Kelly frowned. He was due before long at Greenwich to sit his sub-lieutenant’s examinations. After that he might call himself a fully-fledged officer and a grown man. The fact that London was no place to have handy when you were trying to concentrate on getting good marks was always a little disconcerting. On the other hand, it meant a good feed at the Upfolds’ town house. Charley’s family always moved from Ireland to London for the season with a view to finding Charley’s elder sister, Mabel, a husband; and since Brigadier-General Upfold was not short of money there was always plenty to eat, something that held a considerable appeal to a growing young man kept short of food in his own mess and lacking the wherewithal to buy anything to supplement it.

The boats were queuing up round the stern of the flagship flow, spray leaping up between them from the trapped waves. In front of him a boat from
Argonaut
was jockeying for position and doing it none too successfully, then he saw Verschoyle alongside him, skilful, languid, handsome as the devil and apparently indifferent to the weather.

‘I’m going to take a chance and try the starboard ladder,’ Verschoyle called out as the two boats bounced alongside each other. ‘This way, we’ll wait until Doomsday.’

Kelly nodded and, considering it might be good idea to do Verschoyle in the eye by getting there first, increased revolutions and pushed in front of him, the funnel spouting smoke and cinders.

A wave slopped on board, heavier and wetter than he’d expected, but at least there was no one ahead of him, and his attention fully occupied, he headed for the flagship’s side. A sailor on the gangway made a warning gesture with his hand but, occupied with outdoing Verschoyle, Kelly took no notice and the Marine corporal with the mailbag moved towards the bows.

Well aft, the flagship’s ladder was a good twenty degrees outside the line of the ship. But Kelly wasn’t worried because he knew from experience that when he ran his engine astern his bows would kick to port. Unfortunately, the battleship was yawing to starboard on her cable and, overconfident of his ability, he put his engine into reverse just too late. The swell lifted the boat and he saw the sailor on the gangway run for his life, then the lower platform of the ladder crumpled as it holed the port bow of the pinnace. With a crash it spread itself outwards with what seemed a horrifying slowness that Kelly felt he might have halted if he’d thought of it in time; then the treads flew apart and came down on him in a shower. One of them hit him on the head and a second went down the funnel with a clatter and a puff of soot, and he heard a heavy voice from below yell in alarm, ‘What the effing Christ was that?’ and he became aware of the Marine corporal hanging like grim death to the ladder falls, the strap of the mailbag between his teeth and his eyes sticking out at the devastation, like prawns on a plate.

‘That’s fucked it,’ someone said.

His face pink with shame, Kelly bowed to the furious signals of the figure on the deck wearing three gold stripes and a heavy frown and moved ahead to the ship’s derrick. The wreckage of the accommodation ladder was lowered none too gently to the roof of the pinnace’s cabin and the commander shouted down in a voice that rasped like a file across the corner of an anvil.

‘That ought to trim you up a bit, young feller-me-lad. Ask your commander to return it to us when it’s repaired. And, while you’re at it, I would suggest also that you report to your sub-lieutenant for six of the best for shoving your nose in where it isn’t wanted.’

His eyes down, and silent with self-disgust, Kelly put the boat astern, the foredeck cluttered with the remains of the gangway. There would be a highly dramatic arrival aboard
Huguenot
, he knew, with reports of what had happened preceding him at full speed. By this time, he was certain that Verschoyle, who’d been several times to the flagship that morning, had been well aware of the conditions and had encouraged him deliberately. But that wouldn’t let him off six of the best with his leave probably stopped for donkey’s years into the bargain. His mind full of the horrors of the next few weeks, he was barely aware of what was happening and, in his desire to get away from the scene of his disgrace, he forgot to look astern.

‘Oh, Christ!’ the stern sheetsman said and, swinging round, with the hull quivering and shaking as the engine turned at full power in his efforts to back away from his crime, he realised he was heading stern-first right across the blue and white bows of the admiral’s barge which was heading at speed for the starboard ladder. For one ghastly second, he caught a glimpse of the shining brass and paintwork and rigidly-held boathooks covered with tiddly cordwork, and of the tall figure of the admiral just stepping from the cabin to climb aboard his ship as his boat came alongside. The look of fury he received, the startled stare of the sailors, and beyond them Verschoyle’s gleeful grin, would remain, he felt certain, in his mind until his last breath.

A bluejacket leapt to the bow of the barge with a heavy cork and coir fender, while another made a despairing jab with one of the magnificent boathooks, missed and scored a deep groove all the way down the side of the pinnace; then the barge banged hard into the beam of the pinnace with a thump like the crack of doom. The fender had been dropped into place just in time, but the speed of the barge as it headed in at a brisk canter across the waves to the flagship burst it like a bomb. Kelly saw the admiral stagger off-balance and sit down heavily, then he was being showered with ground cork that scattered all over the pinnace, the barge, and the whole surface of the sea like confetti at a wedding.

Both boats had come to a standstill, grinding against each other in the lop of the sea, the spray leaping up between them like fountains gone mad. A livid face lifted above the canopy, eyebrows working, gold-encrusted cap lopsided over one eye, and a furious voice bellowed out.

‘Report to my cabin at once!’

Sick with shame, humiliation and dread, convinced that his naval career had come to an end even before it had properly started, Kelly backed off to allow the admiral’s barge to proceed. The admiral, his beak of a nose in the air, his face dark with anger, sailed past and Kelly saw him stamping up the steps of the newly-replaced starboard ladder to the deck. The twitter of bosun’s pipes sounded like the moaning of banshees.

For a long time not one of the bobbing boats moved. It seemed as if they were all petrified with horror.

‘Made a right cock of that one, sir,’ the bowman observed quietly as Kelly, red-faced and miserable, went ahead again. Verschoyle appeared alongside, grinning.