Convoy (35 page)

Yorke, bulky with two thick jerseys over the second mate’s uniform coat, had stuffed his duffel coat under a thwart with his revolver and a small canvas bag of cartridges in one pocket and a couple of grenades in the other. Now he checked off the men.

First, the junior fourth engineer. Mills was plump, cheerful, and outwardly just an overgrown schoolboy, complete with acne and little need to shave. In fact he lived for engines and, the chief engineer had confessed, the smaller the better: when one of the small water pumps, driven by a temperamental two-stroke engine, gave any trouble, the shout went up for Mills. One of the last jobs he had done before the ship left Liverpool had been to strip down and reassemble the lifeboat engine, test run and remount it. The fuel filter had been replaced, the fuel tank topped up and an extra can lashed down in the bow. Mills had £28 in bets with the men that the engine would start first time.

Mills came with a bonus: he had an automatic pistol of his own and three spare magazines (and, he told Yorke, more than a thousand rounds of ammunition, bought when the ship was in the United States two trips ago) and was probably the ship’s champion grenadier. He had been a keen member of his school OTC and a regular winner at the coconut shies in travelling fairs, and when Yorke had seemed doubtful that this qualified him for a couple of grenades he had slipped into the saloon, selected an orange from the fruit dish, and returned to ask Yorke where he wanted it lobbed. They were standing on the main deck at the time, abaft and below the radio room on the deck above. Yorke saw an open port and pointed at what seemed to him a difficult throw, let alone using the overarm lob needed for a grenade. A minute later the radio room door flung open and a startled and furious third sparks came out, holding the orange as though it was going to explode.

‘Pistols, spare clips, lifejacket, no papers showing you come from the
Marynal
, and a couple of grenades?’ Yorke asked Mills.

‘Haven’t got the grenades yet. That DEMS gunner chap is just opening the box.’

Yorke looked round to see Jenkins levering the lid off a wooden crate. ‘Are the fuses in those things?’

‘No, sir; I’ve got them here.’ He gestured to a small metal box. ‘I’m going to prime ’em as I issue them out.’

Cadet Reynolds had heard Yorke checking Mills and began: ‘Pistol and two spare clips…’

‘Where did you get the pistol from?’

‘Lecky lent me his, sir,’ Reynolds said apologetically. ‘He showed me how to work it.’

The
Marynal
seemed to be a floating arsenal. ‘Very well, but don’t cock it until you want to use it. And remember the safety catch.’

‘Yes, sir. No papers identifying the
Marynal
. Lifejacket. Deck knife. Torch and extra batteries.’

Slowly Yorke worked his way through the remaining men, less because there was any particular need to check their equipment than because he needed a brief chat with each of them. He wanted to hear each man speak and equally important he wanted the seamen to hear him when he was talking quietly. Once on board the
Penta
, much might turn on a whispered order or response.

Finally Jenkins came up to him, and handed him two grenades. ‘Pity we can’t take that projector with us, sir, and drop it over the side,’ he murmured.

‘Don’t be nasty to the projector; without it we’d never have these grenades.’

‘I’m a bit doubtful about them, to tell you the truth, sir. These Maritime Regiment chaps are all right, considering they’re pongoes, but they’re mortal clumsy with their hands. We finished the last trip without a china mug left in the mess, all because they was cack-handed washing up.’

‘Don’t worry, we’re not throwing mugs this time. Now I want you and those other DEMS gunners to forget I’m RN and think of me as the second officer of whatever ship we choose.’

‘Fact is we don’t pay much attention to second officers, sir,’ Jenkins admitted frankly. ‘Chief officers is what we have more to do with. The mate in this ship’s an ’oly terror.’

‘Any chief officer in a ship with DEMS gunners needs to be a terror, holy or otherwise,’ Yorke said unsympathetically. ‘Now, where’s Watkins?’

The signalman was up in the lifeboat, cursing with an unimaginative monotony as he lashed down the large and heavy suitcase that represented the lifeboat transmitter.

Yorke looked over the thwart. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Oh, just lashing this set down again, sir. That bloody third sparks secured it right against the compass, sir. The south end’d point north if we switched on to listen to Vera Lynn on the distress frequency. Never heard of deviation, that bloody third sparks.’

Yorke realized that as far as Watkins was concerned, the man’s name for evermore would be ‘that bloody third sparks’, and no doubt when he was with the other signalmen he would refer to ‘your mate that bloody third sparks’. Mind you, Yorke admitted to himself, any third sparks lashing a radio transmitter within a few inches of a compass had only himself to blame if he lacked friends… That kind of thing could have a boat heading for the north pole when the compass showed it was steering for the south and the worshipful company of penguins.

Now for the long wait. Would the insider attack tonight? It should, if the Swede was part of the plan. Would the
Marynal
be hit? If she was, then there was going to be a squeeze in the ship’s three other lifeboats because Hobson had already offered to let the present plan stand should the ship be hit.

It was now seven o’clock. If the insider stuck to his regular routine he would torpedo his first ship at eight o’clock. It was all becoming very Teutonic. It may have worked well the first time – attacking at eight o’clock (or twelve or four) meant catching every ship as the watch was changing. In theory there might be a certain amount of confusion, but if the
Marynal
was anything to go by there was very little: the cadet on watch left the bridge fifteen minutes earlier to rouse the cadet who would relieve him, the mate who would take over from the one on watch, the radio officer and the new quartermaster. The DEMS gunners arranged for their own relief. With the new watch roused the cadet returned to the bridge and waited.

The new mate would come up (by tradition five minutes early) and be told the course and speed (course really, the speed was usually the same), and anything else of importance (like ‘The old man’s turned in’). The new cadet would arrive and be told nothing, and the quartermaster be given the course by the man he was relieving. And that was all. In a warship it was more complex because there were more men doing more jobs, but anyway, when the insider had hit the first ship on the first night he had no doubt visualized vast confusion and panic, so he had repeated it the second night. Being German he would probably do it again tonight.

Yorke could just see the time by the polished brass clock in the wheelhouse which was screwed to the bulkhead just behind the quartermaster at the wheel in a position where the dim light from the compass binnacle was just sufficient to light up the hands. It also showed the thin black metallic circle outside the numbers on which electrical contacts could be adjusted so that a buzzer sounded at predetermined times – the times set out for the zigzag diagram and warning of the precise moment when the wheel had to be put over on to a new course. He held his wristwatch against the binnacle light. A few seconds’ difference from the clock, which was checked daily against the chronometer. Two minutes to eight o’clock. Was that
Oberleutnant
at this very moment lining up the dark shadow of a ship in the graticules marked on the lens of his periscope?

He walked out of the wheelhouse, feeling his way round the armour-plating and on to the wings of the bridge. The cadet and the DEMS gunner were dark figures, impressions rather than people, as his night vision slowly returned.

The now-familiar opening of the furnace door and the hollow boom of it slamming shut lit up the whole convoy for a long moment and Yorke saw that the commodore’s ship had been hit. A few moments later he heard Captain Hobson, who had been standing out of sight outboard of the two Hotchkiss guns at the end of the bridge, say, ‘I hope the old Admiral’s all right.’

Yorke pictured the U-boat waiting submerged, the
Oberleutnant
now watching through his periscope, his men holding the firing levers of the other three torpedo tubes, and waiting to see which way the second ship in the column would go: whether she would pass to port of the commodore’s ship – using her as a shield, because the torpedo burst on the starboard quarter – or blunder along the starboard, giving the U-boat another target. Yorke realized the U-boat might have fired at the commodore’s ship just after she had passed, so that a slight alteration of the U-boat’s heading would bring the second ship into the sights before she started to pass one side or another.

Now a second red flash, this time on the bow of the second ship and showing the commodore stopped and sinking fast fifty yards ahead, revealed that that was what the Ted had done. Would he now turn even farther and get the third ship?

The captain of that merchantman had a few moments only to make one of three choices – turn to starboard (trying to increase speed and head straight for the U-boat, gaining the advantage of surprise and presenting only his beam instead of his length as a target), turn hard a’port to steer the reciprocal directly away from the U-boat (and risk hitting the third ship in the third column), again having the advantage of surprise, or keep his position, just altering course enough to port to avoid the two sinking ships ahead of him.

A third flash from abreast of the
Marynal
lit up the two sinking ships and showed the insider had hit his third victim of the night and the ninth in three days.

‘He’s not using his stern tube,’ Yorke told Hobson, who had scrambled out of the gun position to stand beside him.

‘How d’you know?’

‘We’d have been hit a minute or so ago: he must have been right between us and that last one. The
Somers Island
, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes. Bad payers, the owners. Always having crew trouble.’

‘Somers Island was the old name for Bermuda, wasn’t it?’

‘Believe so,’ Hobson said, and both men knew they were whistling in the dark because it was still not too late for the U-boat to fire its stern tube. ‘At least the rescue tug is in the right column,’ he added. ‘In fact…’ he broke off.

‘Yes,’ Yorke said, ‘the tug’s the only vessel left afloat in the fourth column now. The vice-commodore will have to close up the gap as soon as it’s daylight: we’re a six-column convoy, now, not seven.’

‘Bert James is a steady enough fellow,’ Hobson said. ‘He’s the vice-commodore. Leading the second column, isn’t he? He was rear-commodore in a convoy we were in last summer. Comes from Aberdeen. Teetotaller, too. Signed the pledge and all.’

‘We’re out of range of that stern tube now,’ Yorke said. ‘I think it helps us being close to that Swede.’

Hobson sniffed doubtfully. ‘The ship ahead of her was hit the first night, don’t forget.’

‘Maybe we’re in a lucky spot, astern of her.’

‘We’ll see,’ Hobson said. ‘By the way, where are you from?’

Yorke almost answered ‘Kent’ without thinking, then realized the reason for Hobson’s question. ‘The
Somers Island
, I think: the rescue tug should pick up everyone so there’s no chance of a mix up. It was Sir George Somers, by the way: I’ve just remembered. He was on his way to Virginia sometime around 1605 and ran into a hurricane which wrecked him on Bermuda. That was how it was settled.’

‘Hurricane, eh? Well, it blew him off course all right. Hope you have better luck. Say when you’re ready.’

Hobson was a cool chap, Yorke noted thankfully, but the U-boat had just made the Yorkshireman’s job easier: apart from the tug, which must be stopped and picking up survivors from the
Somers Island
, the whole of the next column had been wiped out, so the
Marynal
’s turn to port to lower the boat would be much easier.

‘I’m just going down to tell my chaps where we’re from, but you can start having steering problems whenever you’re ready. I think that U-boat’s finished his work for the night.’ He shook Hobson by the hand. ‘Thanks. Keep my cabin reserved for me!’

Yorke felt the ship heeling as he scrambled down the companionway to the boat deck, and he could picture Hobson’s quiet helm orders called through the doorway to the quartermaster as he watched to make sure he didn’t ram a wreck in turning to port out of the column: the commodore’s ship might still be quite close.

The lifeboat team was squatting down between the two drums round which the ropes of the falls of the lifeboat were wound. ‘Cup o’ cocoa, sir?’ Watkins asked, standing up with a big jug in his hand. Yorke did not want his bladder bothering him for the next half an hour so refused and said to the men briskly: ‘That third ship to be hit, the one abeam of us, was the
Somers Island
. We’re from her. You can remember her various positions.
Somers Island
, although it’s pronounced “summer’s”, is spelled s-o-m-e-r-s. I’m told the owners have a bad reputation for pay and conditions. The owners are the Hunter Shipping and Trading Company, known to some of you as the “Hungry Hunters”. Somers Island, by the way…’ he felt the ship begin to heel and the rumble of the engine eased slightly as Hobson reduced the revolutions, ‘is another name for Bermuda. And Bermuda is a tiny island standing by itself five hundred miles or so north of the Caribbean. The
Somers Island
is or was, rather, 6800 tons and carrying a mixed cargo. Under charter to Elder Dempster and the United Africa Company. Engines for fighters and bombers in crates, tents in bales, boots for the Army in wooden crates, a good deal of webbing, tropical uniforms, rifles and Bren guns also all in crates…no explosives, you’ll be glad to hear,’ he concluded and was glad to hear the men laugh.

Now the
Marynal
was rolling heavily: for the past few days she had been pitching, with only a slight roll, the seas hitting her fine on the port bow. Now Hobson had turned her to port she was lying with the wind and sea on her starboard side, her port side making a lee. Or a comparative lee, Yorke thought as he looked down into the inky-black water. The waves were rising and falling some fifteen feet; once it was lowered and before the falls were cast off, the lifeboat would be like a run-amok lift.