Medusa (24 page)

In the circumstances it was a bit hard to find himself serving under a man who had joined the Navy as a boy seaman at
Ganges
and been commissioned out of the lower deck, was several years his junior and newly promoted to Lieutenant Commander, a rank he had held more years than he cared to remember. Added to which, he had never had command of a ship in his life, and now this raw young
Welshman was plunging him straight into a first-class Mediterranean balls-up. That was his choice of words, and he went on: ‘There's Chinese in the dockyard here, one of the latest Russian cruisers anchored in Grand Harbour, and the Libyans barely two hundred miles away. We should never have come to the wharf here. We should never have agreed to tie up alongside.' He turned away, muttering something that sounded like, ‘He should have had more sense.' Then he was giving orders for singling up and sailors were letting go all but the head and stern ropes and the springs.

The bridge had now filled up with the special sea duty men, the Navigator standing in the middle by the pelorus. Mault, watching from the bridge wing, finally told him to inform the Captain the ship was singled up and ready to proceed.

I was watching the quay, so I didn't see Mault's face as the Pilot put the phone down and told him the Captain was in the main communications office and he was to take the ship out to the new anchorage himself, but I did notice the sharpness in his tone as he gave the order to let go aft and, picking up the mike to the wheelhouse below, said, ‘Port thirty, slow ahead port, slow astern starb'd.'

I could feel the beat of the engines under my feet, saw the stern swing clear of the quay, then we were backing out past the rust-patched freighter moored at the Parlatorio Wharf. ‘Harbour launch, sir, coming away from Gun Wharf, heading towards us.'

Mault nodded his acknowledgement of the lookout's report, the ship still going astern and turning. As soon as we were clear of the freighter and had sea room to complete the 180° turn, he went ahead, the long arm of the harbour opening up in front of us as we turned the end of Senglea Point with the massive fortress of St Angelo showing beyond it. The harbour was a broad lane of flat water ablaze with lights on either side and at the end of it the swinging
beam of the St Elmo light flashing three every fifteen seconds, with the small light on the end of the breakwater winking steadily.

Mault moved to the chart table, calling to the Pilot to join him. ‘Plan to anchor about there,' he said, pointing his finger to a position roughly south-west of what used to be Gallows Point but was now shown on the chart in Maltese as Il-Ponta Ta'Ricasoli.

‘Right in the fairway?'

‘Well no, a little in towards Bighi Bay.'

The Navigating Officer nodded. ‘Nine Fathoms Bank. You'll have eighteen to nineteen metres. That do you?' He had the plot going and there was a PO on the radar. Through the sloping windows I could see the Russian cruiser looming large and brilliantly lit. ‘Harbour launch on the port quarter, sir. About one hundred metres off. He's signalling us to stop.'

‘Thank you, Stevens.'

There was a little group closed up around the capstan on the fo'c's'le and I could see men on the deck of the cruiser. She looked enormous as we ran close down her starb'd side and it crossed my mind that if the Russians became involved in any way it really would be an international incident. And then I saw a man with a rag in his hand waving from the open door of the helicopter hangar aft and the thought was suddenly absurd.

‘Matey, isn't he?' The Pilot smiled at me. ‘The way they behave sometimes you'd think they were our comrades-in-arms. And that's one of their
Kresta
class – very lethal!' He was a short man with a round face, a puggy blob of a nose and a twinkle in his eyes. ‘My name's Craig, by the way. Peter Craig. I'm supposed to see my lords and masters here don't scrape their bottom along the seabed or hit a headland.' He waved at the chart. ‘That's where we'll be anchoring.' He indicated a little cross he had pencilled in. ‘Then we'll start explaining ourselves to the harbour master.' He glanced at his watch. ‘Twenty-two minutes
to go till the next news. Think they'll have it on the World Service?'

A sub-lieutenant, standing beside the chart table with his back to the bulkhead, said quietly, ‘If the BBC includes it in the news, then the PM will be tearing the guts out of the C-in-C and we'll be in the shit good and deep. Thank your lucky stars, Pilot, you're just a common navigator. I wouldn't be in Taffy's shoes right now …' He stopped then, glancing at me apologetically. ‘Sorry, sir, no disrespect, but all Welshmen are Taffy to the boys, just as anybody called Brown is Buster and anybody with a name like Randolph, our Chief, becomes Randy. No disrespect, you see.' Like the Pilot, he was a Scot, a Glaswegian by the sound of his voice. His name was Robinson and he was a seaman officer-under-training, one step up from midshipman. I thought he was probably not more than nineteen or twenty years old.

The Pilot was concentrating now on the approach to the anchorage and it was an older officer standing by the radar who answered him. ‘You shoot your mouth off like that and it's you who'll be in the shit.' And he added, ‘Right now nobody wants to be reminded what could happen following that little incident, so forget your old man's on the ITN news desk and keep your trap shut. Okay?'

There was a juddering under my feet and I turned to see the ship was slowing: ‘Harbour launch close abeam, still signalling Stop.' Mault ignored the report. He came back to the chart table, took a quick glance at the position the Navigating Officer had pencilled in, then asked him to report how far before letting go the anchor as he moved to the port bridge wing and took up one of the microphones. Everyone was silent now, waiting, the ship slowing, small alterations of helm, the shore lights barely changing position. ‘Let go!' I felt, rather than heard, the rumble of the chain, then the voice of the officer on the fo'c's'le was reporting how many shackles of cable had gone out.

‘Well, that's that.' Craig checked the time, entered it on
the chart against the fix he had taken as the anchor was let go. Behind him, the bridge began to empty. ‘Care to join me for a drink in the wardroom, sir?'

I hesitated, then nodded. Lloyd Jones would be as anxious to get rid of me as I was to go, so no point in making a nuisance of myself. Besides, I was interested to know what his officers thought of it all.

The wardroom was two decks down on the starb'd side. Half a dozen officers were already there and all of them silent, listening for Big Ben on the loudspeaker set high in the corner. It came just as Peter Craig handed me the horse's neck I had asked for, the solemn tones of the hour striking, then the announcer's voice giving the headlines. It was the third item and followed bomb blasts in Belfast and Lyons – ‘A frigate of the Royal Navy on a courtesy visit to Malta was involved this evening in an incident in which a shore party had to be given protection. Shots were fired and one officer was injured.' That was all.

‘Playing it down,' Craig said, sucking eagerly at his drink and turning to look around him. ‘Where's young Robbie? Hey, Robinson – tell yer dad he'll have to do better than that. The people at home should know what really happened.' His words about summed up the view of the others. A put-up job, that was their verdict, and then Mault came in. ‘Mr Steele. The Captain would like a word with you. He's in his cabin.'

I nodded, finishing my drink, but waiting for the news broadcaster to come to the end of the Lyons outrage and move on to the Malta incident. It was padded out, of course, nothing new, and nothing to upset the Maltese, no indication that it was they who had fired the first shot, or that the ship had been deliberately moored alongside Hamilton Wharf so that an anti-British mob could move in from the nearby Malta Dry Docks and threaten the lives of British sailors returning from a wine party that had almost certainly been organised solely for the purpose of luring them ashore.

I thanked Craig for the drink, excused myself and went up to the Captain's cabin. It was empty, a cup of black coffee untouched on the desk. I went to one of the portholes. We had swung to our anchor and were now bows-on to the harbour entrance so that I was looking straight across to the cathedral and the domes of Valetta with the signal flagstaff towering above them. The harbour launch had been joined by two police launches, all three of them keeping station opposite to the bridge on the port side. An officer on the leading police launch had a loudhailer to his mouth, the words coming muffled as they reached me through the shatterproof glass: ‘You will plees to lower your gangway. I wish to come on to your ship and spik with the Captain.' And the reply, from somewhere above me – ‘When you bring the British High Commissioner out we can discuss things. Okay?'

The steward put his head round the pantry door. ‘Captain's apologies, sir, but he's been called to the MCO. Can I get you a drink?'

I shook my head. ‘Another cup of coffee would be nice though.'

He nodded, retrieved the untouched cup from the desk and, as he was taking it back into the pantry, he hesitated. ‘Excuse me asking, sir, but do you know the Captain well? I mean, you're a friend of his, aren't you?'

I didn't know how to answer that, so I just gave a bit of a nod and waited.

The steward stood there with the cup in his hand as though trying to make up his mind. Finally he said, ‘I can't tell him, sir, but perhaps you can. There's a lot of rumours going round the ship. In the seamen's messes, I mean. They say the Captain's –' again the hesitation – ‘well, bad luck, if you get me. A sort of Jonah. And it's not just the Captain. It's the ship.'

‘Any particular reason?' I asked.

He stood there awkwardly, feeling no doubt he had said too much already. ‘There's quite a few – misfits on board, sir.'

‘Troublemakers, do you mean?' I asked.

He gave a little shrug, shaking his head. ‘Hard to say, sir. Toughies certainly. Real toughies. Some of the lads feel they've been landed with a load of shit – if you'll excuse me – men that other ships wanted to be rid of.' And he added, These are the comments of lads that volunteered, you understand, specialists most of them, real good lads who thought
Medusa
was intended for some sort of special service. That's why they volunteered.'

I took him up then on the use of that word ‘specialists' and he said they had been on courses, some of them, that weren't the usual run of courses sailors got sent on – demolition, assault, urban guerrilla warfare. ‘There's even men on board here who've been trained by the SAS.' And he added, ‘They volunteered for something out of the ordinary. At least, that's what they thought, something that sounded to them like it was as near to active service as you could get in peacetime. Instead, they find themselves on a ship that's got a hardcore of throw-outs in the crew. Tell him, will you, sir? Privately. He should know the feeling.' He said that quickly, almost in a whisper, and as he turned to go into the pantry, the entrance curtain was swept aside and Gareth entered, his face white, his lips a hard, tight line, and he was scowling. ‘Get me some coffee, Jarvis.' He had a sheet of paper in his hand and he went straight to his desk and sat there, staring at it. He seemed completely oblivious of my presence. The main broadcast began to sound through the ship, Mault's voice ordering special sea duty men and the cable party to close up. ‘All action stations to be manned and gun crews closed up.'

I couldn't believe it. I stared at Lloyd Jones. He'd heard it, but he made no move to counteract the order. ‘Can you drop me off now?' I asked him. The harbour launch …'

He was staring at me, his eyes wide, that shocked look on his face as though suddenly aware that he had a civilian witness to what was happening on board. He shook his
head. ‘Sorry.' He held up the sheet of paper. ‘Orders. No contact with the shore and put to sea immediately. Resist any attempt to prevent departure. Ministry of Defence. Whitehall's orders.' He put his hand to his head, leaning forward. ‘Downing Street by the sound of it. Christ!' And then he suddenly seemed to get a grip of himself. He smiled. ‘Glad to have you aboard. My God I am!' The steward brought him his coffee and he gulped it down, then reached for his cap and jumped to his feet. ‘Make yourself at home. I'm afraid you'll have to put up with us for some time now.' He stopped in the doorway, his face grim as he said very quietly, so that only I could hear him, ‘
Medusa
is to leave now – immediately.' He hesitated, then added, ‘It's Menorca. Port Mahon. I'm sorry, but those are my orders.' He turned then, putting his hat on and dropping the curtain behind him. There were feet pounding the deck, the throb of engines again and a clanking for'ard, the chain coming in.

I went up to the bridge. Everyone was back at their stations and the officer on the fo'c's'le reporting the anchor up and down, the shorelights beginning to move as the ship got under way. The harbour and police launches were maintaining station on the port side and one of their officers shouting through a loudhailer, his amplified voice clearly audible and nobody paying attention, the beat of the engines increasing, the ship gathering speed. Port Mahon! Why Mahon? Why was
Medusa
ordered to Menorca immediately? Regardless of the Maltese.

‘Vessel putting out from Kalkara, sir. Looks like a patrol boat.'

It was Mault who acknowledged the lookout's report, the Captain merely raising his glasses to look at it.

‘They're signalling, sir. An order to stop.'

Gareth nodded. ‘Maximum revs as soon as you're clear of that ferry.'

I had tucked myself as inconspicuously as possible
against the rear bulkhead, between the chart table and the echo-sounder, which was clicking away over my left shoulder. I saw the ferry emerge virtually from under our bows as we sliced into its wake, the rising hum of the engines almost swamped by the surge of the bow wave as Gareth pulled open the port-side door to look back at the launches.