The Cruel Sea (1951) (13 page)

Ferraby’s eyes were new, and took a good deal on trust: other eyes – Ericson’s among them – were not, and to them, it must be admitted, the convoy was somewhat more impressive than the escort, which reflected perfectly the pinched circumstances of the Royal Navy at this stage. To shepherd these forty-six ships through waters which were potentially the most treacherous in the world, there had been provided one fifteen-year-old destroyer, of a class which, though valiantly manned and valiantly driven, was really far too slight and slender for the Atlantic weather: two corvettes – one a pre-war edition of crude design, the other
Compass Rose
; a trawler, and a rescue tug which already, in the sheltered waters of Liverpool Bay, was bouncing about like a pea on a drum. Five warships – four and a half would be nearer the truth – to guard forty-six slow merchantmen was not a reassuring prospect for the experts on either side . . . But there it was: the best that could be done. And since there were no more ships to be had, something else would have to fill the gap: skill and luck must somehow bring about what a rational probability could not hope to effect.

Compass Rose
was kept busy all that afternoon. It meant a long day for the Captain, who had been on the bridge since first light; but certainly he could not leave it now, when there was really no one else who could be trusted to handle
Compass Rose
in close company with other ships. So he stayed on, wedged in a corner of the bridge, drinking successive cups of tea and giving endless helm orders, while they worked through the various tasks which
Viperous
had set them. First they had to see that all the ships had sailed, checking their names and numbers against the long list which had been signalled to them: then they had to round up the stragglers and coax them into a closer formation: then – most trying of all – they had to pass a verbal message over the loudhailer to each of the forty-six ships, and, since it concerned an important alteration of their course during the night, make absolutely sure in each case that the instructions had been understood.

Over and over again they repeated that message: first the Captain, then Lockhart (who had the afternoon watch), then Leading-Signalman Wells, then the Captain again. Some ships were deaf, and needed endless repetitions: some were foreign, and had to summon a man from the depths of the stokehold to take the message: some were having their afternoon sleep, and doubtless thought the booming voice was all part of the same bad dream.

‘God Almighty!’ said Ericson at one point, when five minutes’ hailing of a big tanker had produced nothing more than a vague salute from a man in bowler hat on the bridge: ‘You’d think they
wanted
to get lost tonight. Try them again, sub.’

‘Hallo, Number Thirty-Two,’ Lockhart called wearily through the loudhailer. ‘Hallo, Number Thirty-Two. I have a message for you. Take it down, please.’

The tanker ploughed on, while
Compass Rose
kept jaunty pace with her, like a Pekingese harbouring designs on a greyhound.

‘Can we use the siren, sir?’ asked Lockhart. ‘They don’t seem to hear the human voice.’

‘We’ll use the gun in a minute.’ Ericson grasped the wire and blew a prodigious blast on the siren. The man in the bowler hat walked to the wing of the bridge and stared at them.

‘Number Thirty-Two – I have a message for you!’ Lockhart called out swiftly. ‘Take it down, please.’

The man on the tanker cupped his hand to his ear.

‘Oh God, the bastard’s deaf,’ said Lockhart despairingly, forgetting that the hailer was still switched on. The crisp comment boomed across the intervening thirty yards of water, and evidently found its mark: the man took his hand down and shook his fist at them instead.

‘You’ve hurt his feelings, sub,’ said the Captain.

‘Mistake, sir – sorry.’ Lockhart was indeed considerably taken aback by what he had done, and when next he spoke he tried to make amends by assuming a winning tone: through the loudhailer, it sounded revolting, like a dance band crooner wooing the customers. ‘Message for you, Number Thirty-Two. Important alteration of course. Please take it down.’

In answer, the man on the tanker raised a megaphone and shouted to them. Faintly over the water came the words: ‘Don’t be so bloody rude. I’ll report you to the Board of Trade.’

Then he went inside and shut the door of the bridge shelter firmly behind him. They had to wait until the change of the watch brought a new man to the bridge, before they could attract any further attention at all.

That first night with the convoy was a restless affair which gave them very little sleep. They were still organised on a two-watch basis – that is, the Captain and Ferraby alternated with Bennett and Lockhart, four hours on and four hours off. It was a trying arrangement at the best of times, hard on the endurance and the temper: even if they could fall asleep as soon as they came off watch, they had to wake and dress and climb up to the bridge again, almost before they had turned over. But this was not the best of times, and
Compass Rose
far from a restful place when they were off duty. The wind was rising, and the Irish Sea with it: the ship responded to the movement with a deplorable readiness, rolling and thumping as if she were being paid for her travail by the hour. In the noisy turmoil between decks, sleep was barely possible, even to men already dog-tired.

There were other things. An aircraft, flying low over the convoy, brought them needlessly to Action Stations at two o’clock in the morning: one of their ships, straggling in the rear (where
Compass Rose
was stern escort), needed constant chivvying to keep her in touch with the main body. Their progress was dishearteningly slow: Chicken Rock Light, at the south end of the Isle of Man, was their mark for so long that at times it was difficult to believe that they would ever leave it behind, and reach the open sea. Altogether, the first night at their appointed job was not reassuring: if it could be as trying as this, with no enemy to fight and only a few odd incidents to contend with, what would it be like when they met the real ordeal?

There was no answer to this question, not that night, nor at any time during the next seventeen days, which was the duration of the trip. But soon, in any case, they forgot to wonder about it: they had enough to deal with, in the simple course of nature. The second day saw them make more tangible progress, north-west between Scotland and Northern Ireland; and nightfall gave them, as their last sight of land, the lovely rain-washed hills of the Mull of Kintyre, and Islay away to the north. Then they turned due westwards, to the open sea and the teeth of the wind, and the deep-sea voyage had begun. As a final introduction to it, U-boats were reported in the area immediately ahead.

They never met those U-boats, which were doubtless thankful enough to stay submerged and escape the fury of the weather; for it was the weather which was the most violent enemy of all. For eight days they steamed straight into a westerly gale: five hundred miles at a grindingly slow pace, buffeting through a weight of wind which seemed to have a personal spite in every blow it dealt. The convoy was dispersed over more than fifty square miles: the escorts were out of touch most of the time; it was impossible to establish any sort of ‘convoy speed’ because they were no longer a composite body, just a lot of ships making the best they could of the vile Atlantic weather. The big ships in the van slowed down, till they had almost lost steerage way, and tried to preserve some sort of order; but the smaller ones still straggled away behind, virtually heaving-to at the height of the gale and often having to steer many degrees off their true course, simply in order not to batter themselves to pieces. On the eighth day
Viperous
, which had had a very bad time and had lost two men overboard, signalled ‘Convoy disperse – proceed independently’: in the circumstances, the signal had an irony which they were scarcely in the mood to enjoy.

The escorts collected:
Viperous
with damage to her bridge superstructure, the old corvette minus one of her boats,
Compass Rose
intact but rolling villainously, the trawler riding well, the tug tossing about with a ludicrous, almost hysterical violence as she tried to keep pace with the rest. They had a rendezvous with the incoming convoy, and they found it – somehow: in the wilderness of wind and rain, with visibility hardly more than five hundred yards at any time, they found the single pinpoint in mid-Atlantic which brought them up with the ships they were waiting for. It was navigation of a very high order: it had been
Viperous’
responsibility, and Ericson, with years of experience behind him, found himself watching
Viperous’
bridge rolling through a sixty-degree arc, and wondering, somewhere between amazement and deep admiration, how on earth her Captain had managed it. Taking sights and fixing their position, under these conditions, was very nearly impossible: somehow it had been done, and done with the absolute accuracy of fleet manoeuvres in calm weather.

They turned for home, with the new convoy of thirty-odd ships which, in the better weather to the westward, had managed to preserve a reasonable formation. But now, with the fierce wind behind them, it was more uncomfortable still; and another U-boat alarm involved ‘evasive routine’ which took them many miles off their proper course and kept them nearly two days extra at sea. Aboard
Compass Rose,
conditions were indescribable. She rolled furiously, with a tireless malice allowing of no rest for anyone. Cooking was impossible, even had they not exhausted their fresh meat and vegetables many days previously: the staple diet was tea and corned beef, at breakfast, lunch and dinner, for nearly a fortnight on end. Everything was wet through: some water had come down a ventilator and flooded the wardroom: forward, the mess decks were a crowded hell of saturated clothes, spare gear washing about round their feet, food overturned – and all the time the noise, the groaning slamming violence of a small ship fighting a monstrous sea. There seemed no end to it.
Compass Rose,
caught in a storm which could take hold of her bodily and shake her till the very rivets loosened: a storm which raged and screamed at her and never blew itself out until they were in the shelter of the land again:
Compass Rose,
adrift on this malignant ocean, seemed doomed to ride it for ever.

Bennett, disliking the experience they were all sharing, said so with honest persistence. He was now the most vocal of the wardroom, complaining with an ill-temper coloured by a real uneasiness: the rotten ship, the lousy convoy, the bloody awful weather – there were the sinews of an unending dirge which was really grounded in fear. Like the others, he had never seen weather like this, nor imagined it possible: he knew enough about ships to see that
Compass Rose
was going through a desperate ordeal, but not enough to realise that she was built to survive it, and would do so. He doubted their safety, and doubt was translated by a natural process into anger. He had, too, made a fool of himself over working out their position – so much so that the Captain, taking the sextant from him, had said: ‘Leave it, Number One – I’d rather do it myself’: it had not helped matters.

He should have done something about getting the mess cleared up in the fo’c’sle, but he couldn’t be bothered. He should somehow have organised at least one hot meal a day, even if it were only warmed-up tinned beans: the galley fire was unusable, but with a little ingenuity it could have been done in the engine room. This, again, was more trouble than he was prepared to take. Instead, he sulked, and shirked, and secretly longed to be out of it.

Not much more of this for him, he decided: there were other ways of winning the war . . . It was all so tiring, too: if he hadn’t been able to hand the watch over to Lockhart, and get forty winks now and again, he’d have been out on his feet.

Lockhart was desperately tired, and rather numbed, for nearly all that voyage. His thin wiry body was not built to withstand the cold: he was not yet accustomed to staying awake and alert, when every nerve under his skin was crying out for sleep; and bitter cold and wakefulness were all that the present offered. Bennett might shirk his watch, spending most of it inside the asdic shelter: he himself could not do so. Four hours on, and four off, for seventeen days at a stretch – that was his share: and the hours ‘on’ were an unending strain, trying his eyes and his tired body to the limit. And when he stumbled down the ladder at the end of his watch, there was little relief to be had: tea and corned beef in the shambles of the wardroom, with water washing about all over the place and the furniture lashed together in one corner, and then the effort to sleep, wedged in his bunk against the endless rolling of the ship, with the light left burning in case of an alarm, and the thought, nagging all the time, that he must get up and face the wind and the sea again, within a few hours. When he
did
face it again, and felt the gale whipping and tearing at his face and clothes, and
Compass Rose
lurching under his feet as if the world itself were drunk, it was with a body from which every instinct save a dumb endurance had been drained.

There was one night he remembered especially, towards the end of the trip, when the wind had veered to the north and the gale was at its height. A gigantic sea was running at them from the beam:
Compass Rose
would rise to it as if she were going up in a lift, balance herself uneasily at its peak, and then fall away into the trough of the wave with a wicked sideways roll. Sometimes the next wave, towering up in its turn, would catch them as they lay there sluggishly and beat down on them before they could rise. That was the moment when the heart quailed: when solid tons of water fell with a thunderous drumming on the bridge and the upper deck, and the spray flew over in clouds, wind-driven and cutting. The storm was indeed incredibly noisy: the water crashed and thudded against their side, the wind howled at them out of the blackness as if it had a conscious intention of terror. Round them was nothing but a waste of sea, a livid grey whipped up here and there to white foam; and then beyond it, like a threatening wall, the surrounding dark, the chaos and flurry of the night.