War and Remembrance (85 page)

The thundering concussion tore at Pug Henry’s ears. He was thrown to his knees. He sprang up, staggering. The whole ship was shuddering like a train off its track, and worse than that, worse than the fire shooting up on the port side, was the sudden list. Ten degrees or more, he groggily estimated — in seconds. What holes those torpedoes must have blown!

Seared into his memory was the story of the
Juneau,
torpedoed and vanishing in a giant explosion. He darted into the bridge house and seized a microphone.
“This is the captain speaking.
“ He heard the grating bellow of
his own voice over the deck loudspeakers.
“Flood magazines of number three turret and jettison five-inch ready ammo. Repeat, flood magazines of number three turret and jettison five-inch ready ammo! Acknowledge!”

A telephone talker shouted that the orders had been heard and were being carried out. The deck was still quivering. Almost, the
Northampton
might be bumping over a reef, but Pug knew that he was out in six hundred fathoms of water. When he strode out on the port wing, microphone in hand, the heat hitting his face surprised him. It was like opening a furnace door. The fire was roaring all over the stern, casting an orange glow far out on the dark water.

“Now, all hands, this is the captain speaking. We’ve taken a torpedo hit, possibly two, on the port quarter. Expedite damage reports. Forward firefighting and damage control parties, lay aft to help control fires and set flooding boundaries. Exec, lay up to the bridge
—”

The orders formed readily in Pug’s mind after months of hard drilling. Drills were a hell of a nuisance to the crew, but they would pay off now. In the bridge house the telephone talkers were relaying damage reports in controlled tones. The OOD and the quartermaster were hunched at the chart table over the ship’s diagram, hatching the lower deck compartments with red and black crayons; black for salt water penetration, red for fire. Bad first reports: three propeller shafts stopped, communication and power failing, water and oil flooding on C and D decks. As Pug kept issuing orders he was already thinking of a salvage strategy. Holding back fire and flood long enough to make port was the thing to try for. Tulagi was eighteen miles away. The three other cripples were already heading there.

“After fire room, secure ruptured fuel and steam lines. All stations that have power pump fuel port to starboard. Pump overboard all port side water ballast,
and—”

Another
BLAST!
jerked the deck under his feet. Far aft behind the boat deck a thick geyser of black oil climbed like a Texas gusher and toppled in the firelight, drenching the mast, the gun director housings, the boat deck, and number three turret in a thick gummy rain. Flames began climbing the oil-soaked mast, making a tower of bright rising fire against the smoky sky. More sheets of oil sprang from below-deck explosions, feeding the flames.

The ship could not live long at this rate. Despite her formidable length and big guns, she was a vulnerable monster. Her stability and her damage control characteristics were poor. She had been built not to military requirements, but to the stupid limits of a politicians’ treaty. Pug had known that all along, hence his zealotry for disaster drills. Alas, the torpedoes had lucked into the heavy cruiser’s weakest spot, just aft of the skimpy armor belt, tearing open main fuel-oil bunkers and — almost certainly — the cavernous engine and fire rooms. It would be all uphill to Tulagi. The sea must be cascading in below.

But the pumping had yet to take hold. This long hull contained some two million cubic feet of air space. That was a lot of buoyancy. If his vessel wasn’t about to blow up, if the enemy didn’t put more torpedoes in her, if the fires didn’t break out of control, he might make port. Even if he had to beach her, the
Northampton
was of immense salvage value. The fire-fighting parties, clumps of moving shadows in the glare, were dragging their handybillies and hoses here and there on the slippery deck, and sparkling streams were raising great clouds of orange-red vapor. Damage reports were pouring up to the bridge house, and the tones of officers and sailors were becoming businesslike. The forward engine room still had power; one propeller was enough to shove this cripple into Tulagi.

For all the heartsickness at the torpedoing of his ship, and the defeat in the making, for all the macabre light and sound of a warship stricken at night — the glare, the crackling tumult, the shouts, the alarms, the smell of burning, the eye-stinging smoke, the worsening list, the nightmare glow on the black sea, the cacophony on the bridge of TBS and sailors’ voices — for all the acute peril, for all the drastic decisions he had to make fast, Victor Henry was not bewildered or beset; on the contrary, he felt himself coming fully alive for the first time since Midway. Back in the bridge house he spoke over the TBS,
“Griffin, Griffin, this is Hawkeye, over.
”

In reply, a formal drawl:
“Hawkeye from Griffin, come in, over
—” An older voice broke through. “Hold on, son, that’s Pug Henry over on the
Northampton.
I’ll talk to him…. Say, Pug, is that you?” Admirals ignored communication procedure. “How are you doing, fella? You look pretty bad from over here.”

“Over here” was the
Honolulu,
the one unscathed cruiser left in the task force, a lean long shadow to the northwest, racing with the destroyer screen out of the torpedo water.

“I’ve got one engine room and one propeller, Admiral. I’ll head for Tulagi too. We’re effecting repairs, or trying to, as we go.”

“That’s one hell of a fire there on your stern.”

“We’re fighting it.”

“Do you require assistance?”

“Not now.”

“Pug, radar shows these bandits retiring westward. I’ll sweep around Savo Island to engage them beyond torpedo range. If you need help, holler, and I’ll send you a couple of my small boys.”

“Aye aye, sir. Good hunting. Out.”

“Good luck, Pug.”

During this talk the executive officer arrived on the bridge, his moon face under the helmet streaked with soot and sweat, and he took charge of damage control while the captain conned the ship. Through battles, bombardments, long voyages, and a Navy Yard overhaul, Pug had developed
confidence in this quiet chubby man from Idaho, though their personal relationship remained by mutual choice a distant one. In Grigg’s last fitness report, Pug had reported him qualified for command. The latest Alnav had promoted Grigg to four stripes, and they expected him to get the
Northampton
any day. Pug already had orders to fly back to Washington for reassignment “when relieved.” With Grigg handling damage control, Pug had time to reflect. His evil luck was certainly holding! Grigg’s orders were probably on the way, but the delay had pushed him into this ill-omened night battle as captain. If he lost his ship, he would have to answer to a court of inquiry, and he could not plead that an inept admiral with an ill-conceived op-plan had led him into torpedo water.

The fires were no longer spreading so rapidly, and the main bulkheads were holding out the sea; so the reports went. But Pug was watching two indicators: the clinometer, which kept creeping left, and a plumb line that he had rigged which showed the ship settling by the stern. He was trying to head around northeast to Tulagi. All the telephone systems had failed, even the sound-powered lines; grounded by salt water, burned out, jarred loose. Messengers were carrying each order down the foremast, along the main deck, through black smoky passageways awash in water or oil, down several more decks to the forward engine room. Conning his ship by this slow process was exasperating, yet she was coming around. Meantime, Grigg was sending rescue teams to release trapped men from flooding compartments. The wounded were being brought topside. The fire-control crews, caught in the oil-drenched gun directors on the buring mainmast, were being saved from roasting alive by asbestos-clad rescuers, slowly mounting the mast behind fog nozzles and helping them down.

Dead ahead on the horizon, Florida Island bulged, with Tulagi lost in its shadow. The list was now up to twenty degrees, about as far as the heavy cruiser rolled in a gale. The
Northampton
hung lifelessly to port in a sea smoothed by leaking oil. It would be a race between the flooding and the remains of the power plant. If Grigg could keep the ship afloat till dawn it might make Tulagi behind the three other cripples, far ahead and brightly smoking. So Pug was thinking when Grigg came to him, mopping his brow with a sleeve. “Sir, we’d better lie to.”

“Lie to? I’ve just now got her on course.”

“Shoring is giving way on C and D decks, sir.”

“But what do we do, Grigg, sit here and drift, filling up? I’ll take some turns off the engine.”

“Also, Captain, Chief Stark says the lube oil supply to number four engine is failing. The pump can’t overcome the list.”

“I see. Well, in that case maybe I will ask the admiral for a couple of destroyers.”

“I guess you should, sir.”

Grigg’s news about the lubricating oil was close to a death sentence. Both men knew it. They both knew, too, that the lube oil system was poorly designed. Long ago, to no avail, Pug had requested an alteration.

“Yes, but meantime let’s close Tulagi, even if we burn out our bearings.”

“Captain, with any way on, we won’t hold out the sea.”

“Then what’s to be done?”

“I’ll counterflood all I can. We’re low on pumping capacity, is the trouble. If I can right her five degrees and double up the shoring we can try getting under way again.”

“Very well, I’ll lay below for a looksee. You ask Griffin for the destroyers. Tell him we’re afire, dead in the water, listing twenty-two degrees, and down hard by the stern.”

Pug descended to the steeply slanting main deck, and slipped and slid ankle-deep in malodorous black oil past the fire-fighters to the huge rip in the afterdeck through which the oil had spouted up. Leaning outboard, he could see ragged hull plates sticking straight out into the water, blown out by the torpedoes. That was a sight he would never forget: a black hole in his ship, rimmed in broken metal like a crudely opened can. The other hole below the water line was reported to be yet larger. Leaning over the lifelines, Pug dizzily felt that the ship might capsize then and there. The list was rapidly getting worse, no doubt of that. He passed horribly wounded and burned men lying in rows on the fantail deck, tended by the pharmacist’s mates. Time was needed to get those men off. Sadly, he returned to the bridge, called the executive officer aside, and told him to prepare to abandon ship.

About an hour later, Victor Henry took his last look around the deserted bridge. The little steel structure was quiet and clean. The quartermaster and the officers of the deck had taken away all the logs and records. The secret publications had been thrown overboard in weighted bags. Below, the crew was mustering at abandon-ship stations. The sea was a black still lake, with four scattered vessels burning on it like fallen yellow stars. The rescue destroyers were on their way. Sharks would be a hazard, and some sixty officers and men, at last muster, would never leave the ship; missing, or killed by fire, water, or explosion. Still, the loss of life would be low if nothing else went wrong.

By now Pug was in a fever to get his crew off. Crippled heavy ships were a prime prey of submarines. The last thing he did was to take from his sea cabin a pair of gloves and the folding photograph frame, containing Warren’s Academy graduation picture and an old photograph of the whole family, in which Warren and Byron were gangling boys, and Madeline a little girl in a paper crown. Tucked into the frame were two small snapshots: Pamela
Tudsbury, huddled in gray fur in the snow outside the Kremlin, and Natalie holding her baby in the Siena garden. About to descend the ladder, he noticed the
Northampton’s
battle flag folded on a flagbag. He took that.

Grigg was waiting for him, firelight flickering on his face, on a main deck slanted like a ski slide. He gave an unhurried muster report.

“Okay, let’s abandon ship, Grigg.”

“You’re coming, then, Captain?”

“No.” He gave Grigg the battle flag. “I’ll get off in due course. Take this. Fly it in your next command. And here, try to keep my family dry for me, will you?”

Grigg tried to argue that counterflooding was still possible, that a number of pumps were working, and that damage control was his specialty. If the captain wouldn’t leave, then the first lieutenant could man the motor whaleboat and look after the men down in the sea. He wanted to remain.

“Grigg, abandon ship,” Pug interrupted in sharp cold tones.

Grigg stood as straight as he could and saluted. Pug returned the salute, saying, in an informal tone, “Well, good luck, Jim. I guess that turn west was a mistake.”

“No,
sir!
You couldn’t do anything else. We had the range. We had the bastards straddled. How could you let them retire scot-free? Pete Kurtz claims we hit a cruiser with that last salvo. He saw the explosions, just after we took those fish.”

“Yes, so he told me. Maybe we can get that verified. Still, we should have hauled ass like the
Honolulu.
But it’s done.”

The exec looked forlornly up and down the steep-slanting deck. “I’ll miss the
Nora-Maru.
”

Surprised, Pug smiled. This was the sailors’ nickname for the ship, and neither he nor Grigg had used it before. “Go ahead, over the side with you.”