HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) Read online

  ‘All right, sir.’

  ‘We’re firing star-shell at the moment, to see if there’s anything on the surface. “X” gun may be firing independently, any time from now on.’

  ‘All right, sir.’

  ‘Take care of yourself, Chief.’

  He could almost hear the other man smiling at what was, from the Captain, an unexpected remark. ‘I’ll do that, sir.’

  The voice-pipe went dead. Walking back to his chair, the Captain allowed himself a moment of profound depression and regret. The First Lieutenant gone. A good kid, doing his first big job in the Navy and tremendously keen to do it properly. With a young wife, too – the three of them had had dinner at the Adelphi in Liverpool, not two weeks ago. There was a bad letter to be written there, later on. And the loss might make a deal of difference to the next few hours.

  The star-shell soared and dropped again. Sitting in his chair, waiting for Chief’s report, listening to the green seas slapping and thumping against the side as Marlborough sagged downwind in the wave troughs with a new, ugly motion, he was under no illusions as to what the next few hours might bring, and the chances of that ‘bad letter’ ever being written by himself. But that was not what he was now concentrating on: that was not in the mapped-out programme … This was the moment for which the Navy had long been preparing him: for years his training and experience had had this precise occasion in view; that was why he was a commander, and the Captain of Marlborough when she was hit. Taking charge, gauging chances, foreseeing the next eventuality and if necessary forestalling it – none of it could take him by surprise, any more than could the chapter headings of a favourite book. When the moment had arrived he had recognized it instantly, and the sequence of his behaviour had lain before him like a familiar pattern, of which he now had to take the tenth or twentieth tracing. He had not been torpedoed before, but no matter: tucked away in his mind and brain there had always been a picture of a torpedoed ship, and of himself as, necessarily, the key figure in this picture. Now that the curtain was drawn, and the image became the reality, he simply had to play his assigned part with as much intelligence, skill, and endurance as he could muster. The loss of the First Lieutenant and over half the ship’s company already was a bitter stroke, both personally and professionally: it would return in full force later; but for the moment it was only a debit item which had to be fitted into the evolving picture.

  ‘Signalman!’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Get the Gunnery Officer on the quarter-deck telephone.’ A pause. More star-shell, reflected on a waste of cold tumbling water, dropped slowly till they were drowned in darkness again. There wasn’t really much point in going on with the illumination now: the U-boat probably thought they had other ships in company ready to counter-attack, and had sheered off. She had, indeed, cause to be satisfied, without pursuing the advantage further …

  ‘Gunnery Officer on the telephone, sir.’

  The Captain took the proffered receiver. ‘Guns?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I’m afraid Number One has been killed. I want you to take over.’

  ‘Oh – all right, sir.’

  Hearing the shocked surprise in his voice, the Captain remembered that the two of them had been very good friends. But that, again, was something to be considered later: only the bald announcement was part of the present pattern. He continued: ‘I think you had better stay aft, as if we were still at full action stations. Chief is in charge of damage control forrard. Stop star-shelling now – I take it you’ve seen nothing.’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘Right. You’d better have all the depth charges set to safe – in fact have the primers withdrawn and dropped over the side. And I want someone to have a look at our draught-marks aft.’

  ‘I’ve just had them checked, sir. There’s nothing to go on, I’m afraid: they’re right clear of the water.’

  ‘Are the screws out of the water too?’

  ‘Can’t see in this light, sir. The top blades, probably.’

  ‘Right. Get going on those depth charges.’

  The Captain handed back the receiver, at the same time saying to the signalman: ‘Get your confidential books in the weighted bags ready for ditching. And tell the W/T office to do the same.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘Bridger.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Go down and get the black holdall, and come back here.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Bridger’s tough, unemotional expression did not alter, but his shoulders stiffened instinctively. He knew what the order meant. The black holdall was, in his own phrase, the scram-bag: it held a bottle of brandy, morphine ampoules, a first-aid kit, some warm clothes, and a few personal papers. It had been tucked away in a corner of the skipper’s cabin for nearly three years. It was as good as a ticket over the side. They’d start swimming any moment now.

  The report from aft about the draught-marks had certainly quickened the tempo a little: his orders to Bridger and to the signalman were an endorsement of this. But quick tempo or slow, there was still the same number of things to be fitted into the available time, the same number of lines in the pattern to be traced. Now, in the darkness, as he turned to the next task, very little noise or movement reached the bridge from anywhere in the ship: only a sound of hammering from deep below (the damage control party busy on their shoring job), a voice calling, ‘Take a turn, there’, as the whaler was swung out, the endless thump and surge of the waves driving downwind – only these were counter distractions in the core of heart and brain which the bridge had now become. Indeed, the Captain was much less conscious of these than of the heavy breathing of Adams, the Chief Bosun’s Mate, who stood by his elbow as close and attentive as a spaniel at the butts. Adams had heard the order to Bridger, and had guessed what it meant: it had aroused, not his curiosity – matters were past such a faint reaction as curiosity now – but the same tough determination as the Captain himself had felt. They were both men of the same stamp: seamen first, human beings afterwards; the kind of men whom Marlborough, in her extremity, most needed and most deserved.

  ‘Mid!’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Go along to the sick bay, and–’

  One of the voice-pipe bells rang sharply. The midshipman listened for a moment, and then said: ‘That’s the doctor now, sir.’

  The Captain bent down. ‘Yes, doc?’

  ‘I want to report about casualties, sir.’

  ‘What’s the position?’

  ‘I’ve got nine down here, sir. Burns, mostly. One stoker with a broken arm. I got a stretcher party organized, and brought them down aft.’

  ‘I was hoping there’d be more.’

  ‘Afraid not, sir.’

  ‘Do you need any hands to help you?’

  ‘No, I’m all right, sir. I’ve got one sick-berth attendant – Jamieson was caught forrard, I’m afraid – and the leading steward is giving me a hand.’

  ‘Very well. But you’ll have to start moving them, I’m afraid. Get them on the upper deck, on the lee side. Ask Guns to lend you some hands from “X” gun.’

  There was a pause. Then the doctor’s voice came through again, more hesitantly. ‘They shouldn’t really be moved sir, unless – ’

  ‘That’s what I meant. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Send the walking cases up to the boat-deck, and see to the others yourself. Divide them up between the two boats. I’ll leave the details to you.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  Thank God for a good doctor, anyway – as bored, cynical, and impatient as most naval doctors were for three-quarters of their time, with nothing to do but treat warts and censor the mail, and then, on an occasion like this, summoning all the resource and skill that had been kept idle, and throwing them instantly into the breach. The doctor was going to be an asset during the next few hours. So, indeed, was every officer and man left to the ship.

  He would have like
d to muster the remaining hands, to see how many the explosion had caught and how many he had left to work with; but that would disrupt things too much, at a time when there must be no halting in the desperate race to save the ship, or, at least, as many of the remaining lives as possible. But as he sat back in his chair, waiting for what he was now almost sure must happen, the Captain reviewed his officers one by one, swiftly tabulating their work at this moment, speculating whether they could be better employed. Number One was gone, of course. Guns in charge aft. Haines in the wireless office (time he was back, incidentally). Chief working the damage control party – that was technically his responsibility anyway, and there was a first-class Chief ERA in charge of the engine room. The Mid here on the bridge. The doctor with his hands full in the sick bay. Merrett – the Captain frowned suddenly. Where the devil was Merrett? He’d forgotten all about him – and indeed it was easy to overlook the shy, newly joined sub who had startled the wardroom on his first night by remarking: ‘My father went to prison as a conscientious objector during the last war, so he’s rather ashamed of me in this one,’ but had then relapsed into the negative, colourless attitude which seemed natural to him. Where had he got to now?

  The Captain repeated the query aloud to the midshipman.

  ‘I haven’t seen him at all, sir,’ the latter answered. ‘He was in the wardroom when I came on watch. Shall I call them up?’

  ‘Yes, do.’

  After a moment at one of the voice-pipes, the midshipman came through with the answer: ‘He was there a moment ago, sir. They think he’s on the upper deck somewhere.’

  ‘Send one of the bosun’s mates to–’ The Captain paused. No, that might not be a good move. ‘See if you can find him, Mid, and ask him to come up here.’

  When the midshipman had left the bridge the Captain frowned again. Why in God’s name had Merrett been in the wardroom a moment ago? What was he doing there at a time like this? Any sort of alarm or crisis meant that officers went to their action stations automatically: Merrett should have gone first to ‘A’ gun, where he was in charge, and then, as that was out of action, up to the bridge for orders. Now all that was known of him was that he had been in the wardroom, right aft. The Captain hoped there was a good explanation, not the attack of nerves or the breakdown of self-control he had been guessing at when he sent the midshipman to find Merrett. He could understand such a thing happening – the boy was barely twenty, and this was his first ship – but they just could not afford it now.

  His guess had been right: so much became obvious as soon as Merrett was standing in front of him. Even in the darkness, with the exact expression on his face blurred and shadowed, he seemed to manifest an almost exalted state of terror. The movements of foot and hand, the twitching shoulders, the slight, uncontrolled chattering of the teeth, the shine of sweat on the forehead – all were here a distillation of fear which would, in full daylight, have been horrible to look at. So that was it … For a moment the Captain hesitated, trying to balance their present crucial danger, and his own controlled reaction to it, against the almost unknown feelings of a boy, a landsman-turned-sailor, confronted with the same ordeal; but then the overriding necessity of everyone on board doing his utmost, swept away any readiness to make allowances for failure in this respect. The details, the pros and cons, the fine-drawn questions could wait; nothing but one hundred per cent effectiveness would suffice now, and that was what he must re-establish.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked curtly.

  Merrett swallowed, looked across the shattered fo’c’sle to the wild sea, and drew no comfort or reassurance from it. He said, in a dry, strained voice: ‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know what to do, exactly.’

  ‘Then you should come and ask me. Do you expect me to come and tell you?’ It was rough: it was, in Merrett’s present state, brutally so but it was clearly dictated by the situation they were in. ‘Where were you when we were hit?’

  ‘I’d just gone up to “A” gun, sir.’

  ‘Must have shaken you up a bit.’ So much allowance, and no more, did the Captain make for what he could only guess at now – youth, uncertainty, self-distrust, perhaps an inherited horror of violence. ‘But I don’t want to have to send for individual officers at a time like this. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ It was a whisper, almost a sigh. He’d been drinking whisky, too, the Captain thought. Well, that didn’t matter as long as it had the right result; and this, and the tonic effect of giving him a definite job to do, could be put to the test now.

  ‘Very well … There’s something I want you to do,’ he went on, changing his tone in such a way as to indicate clearly that a fresh start could now be made. ‘Go down to the boat-deck and see how they’re getting on with the boats. They’re to be swung out ready for lowering, and all the rafts cleared away as well. You’d better check up on the boats’ crews, too: remember we’ve only got this one watch of seamen to play with so far as we know. You’ll want a coxswain, a stoker, and a bowman told off for the motorboat, and a coxswain and a bowman for the whaler. Got that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  It seemed that he had: already he was making some attempt to take a grip on his body, and his voice was more under control. Watching him turn and make for the bridge ladder, the Captain felt ready to bet that he would make a good job of it. The few minutes had not been wasted.

  But they had been no more than an odd, irrelevant delay in the main flow of the current; and now, in quick succession, as if to re-establish the ordained pace of disaster, three more stages came and were passed. Bridger appeared with the black holdall, and with something else which he handed to the Captain almost furtively. ‘Better have this, sir,’ he said, as the Captain’s hand closed over it. It was his safety light, which he had forgotten to clip to his lifejacket – one of the small watertight bulb-and-battery sets which were meant to be plugged in and switched on when in the water. The Captain took it with a grunt and fastened it on, his eyes turning instinctively to the black expanse of water washing and swirling round them. Yes, better have the light ready ...

  Then Haines came up the ladder from below, starting to speak almost before he was on the bridge: ‘I’m afraid they were right about the W/T set, sir,’ he began. ‘It’s finished. And the main switchboard has blown, too. Even if we got the dynamo back on the board–’

  ‘All right, Pilot,’ said the Captain suddenly. And then, to the figure he had discerned at the top of the ladder, the third messenger of evil, he said, ‘Yes, Chief?’

  The engineer officer did not speak until he was standing close by the Captain, but there was no hesitation about his opening words. ‘I don’t think it’s any good, sir.’ He spoke with a clipped intensity, which did not disguise any exhaustion of spirit. ‘That bulkhead – it might go any minute, and she’ll probably break in two when it happens. That means a lot more men caught, sir.’

  ‘You’ve shored up completely?’

  ‘Yes, sir. But the space is too big, and the bulkhead was warped too much before we got the shores to it. It’s working badly already. I can’t see it holding more than another hour, if that.’

  ‘It’s the last one worth shoring,’ said the Captain, almost to himself.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Chief hesitated. ‘I’ve still seven or eight hands down in the engine room, I’d like to get them out in good time. Is that all right, sir?’

  Chief was looking at him. They were all looking at him – Haines, the midshipman, the signalman, Adams, the look-outs, the hard-breathing Bridger – all waiting for the one plain order which they now knew must come. Until that moment he had been refusing to look squarely at this order as it drew nearer and nearer: he could not believe that his loved ship must be given up, and even now, as he hesitated, and the men round him wondered, the idea still had no sort of reality about it. For this man on whom they all relied, this man to whom they attributed no feelings or qualities apart from the skill and forethought of seamanship, was not quite the stock figure
, the thirty-eight-year-old RN Commander, that they all took him to be.

  True, he fitted the normal mould well enough. He had always done so, from Dartmouth onwards, and the progress from midshipman to commander had followed its appointed course – twenty years of naval routine in which a mistake, a stepping-out-of-line would have denied him his present rank. He never had stepped out of line; he had been, and still was, normal about everything except this ship; but for her he had a special feeling, a romantic conception, which would have astounded the men waiting round him. It was not the Navy, or his high sense of duty, or the fact that he commanded her, which had given him this feeling: it was love.

  The old Marlborough … The Captain was not married, and if he had been it might not have made any difference: he was profoundly and exclusively in love with this ship, and the passion, fed especially on the dangers and ordeals of the past three war years, left no room for a rival. It had started in 1926 when she was brand new and he had commissioned her: it had been his first job as First Lieutenant, and his proudest so far. She had been the very latest in ships then – a new sloop, Clyde-built, twin turbines, two four-inch guns (the twin mountings came later), and a host of gadgets and items of novel equipment which were sharp on the palate … There had been other ships, of course, in the sixteen years between; his first command had been a river gunboat, his second a destroyer: but he had never forgotten Marlborough. He had kept an eye on her all the time, checking her movements as she transferred from the Home Fleet to the Mediterranean, thence to the China Station, then home again: looking up her officers in the Navy List and wondering if they were taking proper care of her: making a special trip up to Rosyth on one of his leaves, to have another look at her; and when, at the outbreak of war, he had been given command of her, it had been like coming home again, to somebody dearly loved who was not yet past the honeymoon stage.