The Lion at Sea (21 page)

His view was supported by Verschoyle, whom he met in the bar of the Duke of Cornwall. Despite the fact that the crews of the two great ships were staggering like flies with weariness from the breakneck speed with which they were preparing for sea, Verschoyle seemed entirely untouched and even able to take time off to enjoy himself.

He smiled at Kelly, superior as ever, and after a few preliminary condescending insults, outlined what was happening, aware in his gossipy, cool way of everything that was going on.

‘Sturdee’s due to take over command,’ he said. ‘He’s been at the Admiralty as chief of war staff concerned with tactical measures and he’s been told in no gentle manner by Fisher that, since he made all the plans, he’d better go himself and carry them out.’

‘Told you so himself, I suppose,’ Kelly said.

Verschoyle gave him a pitying look. ‘I never expected to have to put up with you, Maguire.’ There was resentment in his tones. Their positions were changing and he was no longer the dominant figure. For years he had bullied Kelly but the world in that direction was no longer his oyster and from now on his movements would have to be more wary and he would have to keep a tighter hold of his tongue. ‘At least not so soon after getting rid of you in Antwerp.’

‘Or at Thakeham,’ Kelly grinned, aware for the first time in his dealings with Verschoyle of self-confidence.

Verschoyle sniffed. He had lost none of his contempt but, Kelly noticed, he was careful not to call him ‘Young Maguire’. The tension and the dislike were still there but Verschoyle was sufficient of a naval officer not to let it show too much in public.

‘I have a cousin who’s engaged to one of the war room staff,’ he said coldly. ‘Sturdee’s been told to sail on November 11th – and that doesn’t mean November 12th – and that if the ships aren’t ready for sea, he’s to take the dockyard workers with him. There’s quite a bit of alarm and despondency in case he drops ’em off in small boats à la Captain Bligh. For the first time in my experience, somebody’s got their skates on. We were sent down here so fast the recall wasn’t even sounded round the Cromarty and Inverness pubs and half the crew had to join by rail.’

The following afternoon, black clouds of smoke boiling from their funnels, the two great ships were hauled into the fairway by tugs and began to butt south-westward into the wintry South Atlantic to find Von Spee.

Plymouth was still holding its breath when a signal arrived ordering Kelly to the submarine school for a shortened course, and he was just packing his bags when the electric news flashed through the ship that Von Spee’s squadron had been caught and destroyed in its turn with the loss of two armoured and two light cruisers. The victory was celebrated in the wardroom of
Defiance
with a great deal of noise and a tendency to break chairs. Since the British casualties amounted to no more than twenty-five, Kelly assumed that Verschoyle had managed to profit from it.

More news was just beginning to filter through when he reported to
Dolphin.
Sturdee, it seemed, had imperturbably finished his breakfast of porridge and kippers before setting about the Germans in the best nonchalant British style, and Von Spee had gone down in a holocaust of shelling with his flagship,
Scharnhorst,
and more than seven hundred and fifty men, before
Invincible
and
Inflexible
had turned their great guns on
Gneisenau
and finally on
Nürnberg
and
Leipzig.
The newspapers were in raptures for days.

On a spit of land opposite Portsmouth Naval Harbour,
Dolphin
was a hive of activity and Kelly was given a cursory medical examination by an elderly fleet surgeon who looked like a vet.

‘Any trouble with your lungs?’ he demanded.

‘No, sir.’

‘What about when you were sunk in
Cressy
? Swallow any oil?’

‘No, sir. None.’

The medical officer frowned, as if disappointed to have found nothing wrong. ‘You’re not very tall, are you?’ he said.

Kelly’s eyes glittered. ‘I’m not joining the Brigade of Guards, sir.’

The surgeon gave him a sour look and grunted. ‘Expect you’ll do,’ he growled. ‘At least you’ve got plenty of bounce.’

There was still a great deal of euphoria in the air over the victory at the Falklands as the course began, but doubts about the Admiralty and senior officers began once more to creep in as rumour claimed there had been a great deal of luck in it and that Sturdee’s well-publicised imperturbability had, in fact, been dilatoriness so that he had very nearly missed his chance. He was even, it was said, being asked why he had allowed just
one
of Von Spee’s ships to escape. Jacky Fisher’s known viciousness appeared to be in control again and it seemed to be no bad thing either.

The North Sea remained stagnant and still the lower deck’s ‘big smash’ did not come. The German Fleet remained beyond the mines in the Jade River, refusing to come out, though there were numerous alarms and excursions when they were reported on their way. Though the winter remained a quiet one, the war seemed to be spreading. Vast battles had been fought in Russia and, with Turkey now in, British and French warships were patrolling the Aegean in the hope of inducing
Goeben
to emerge through the Dardanelles. A few gun duels between warships and Turkish shore batteries found their way into the newspapers and there was a great deal of diplomatic activity to bring the Greeks in, but it was still the vast killing match in France that overwhelmed everyone. In a mere four-month period, the allies had suffered a million casualties and it suddenly occurred to someone that they were neither advancing nor killing Germans at a greater rate than they were being killed themselves and that it might be a good idea, instead of trying to hammer down the front door, to try to sneak in through the back. A plan was evolved to force the Dardanelles and in March the attempt was made by the British and French Mediterranean Fleets. It produced no great success and three allied ships were sunk at once and three seriously damaged. Somehow, the war didn’t seem to be going too well.

By skilful concealment of his ignorance of some of the more elementary facts about electricity and the internal combustion engine, Kelly passed his examinations without much difficulty and promptly began to wonder if he’d done the right thing. It had been the extra few shillings a day that had first attracted him and then the thought that it might persuade their Lordships of the Admiralty that he didn’t want to be posted to a big ship. Experience had already shown him that submarines were dark, cold, damp, oily and cramped; full of intricate machinery, and giving, in the long run, only a small chance of survival.

Then he realised he was letting his fears run away with him. Submarines had seemed much more fragile and rattly than he’d expected, very different from the sleek streamlined craft he’d imagined. Acquiring knowledge of them had appeared for the most part to be an attempt to understand the confusion of pipes and wires and to keep out of everybody’s way while they manoeuvred the training craft. In the end he had mastered most of it, but he recognised that most of what he would eventually know he would learn now that he’d finished his course.

Leaving
Dolphin,
he was ordered to pick up a draft of men from
HMS Vernon,
an old three-decker which lay on the mud at the upper end of Portsmouth harbour and was the home of torpedoes and electrics. As he stepped ashore, Portsmouth looked the same as ever. The top masts of
Victory
could be seen over the square dockyard buildings and the ferry to Gosport could be heard clanking on its chains across the harbour. A train at the nearby harbour station shrieked and there was such an element of normality about it all, it didn’t surprise Kelly in the slightest to find Rumbelo grinning at him from the middle of the draft, the ribbon of the DSM on his chest, and when the rear rank started whistling ‘Anybody Here Seen Kelly?’ he had to grin back.

‘Hello, Rumbelo,’ he said, as he moved along the line of men. ‘You made it then?’

His posting was as navigator to a newly-commissioned submarine,
E19
, which was lying in the submarine base at Parkeston Quay, Harwich. Since the quay formed part of the railway station, there wasn’t far to carry their kit, and there was no need to put in a word for Rumbelo because the captain, a long-jawed, black-haired lieutenant-commander called Lyster had already asked for him. An extraordinary figure in cricket sweater, knickerbockers, tartan socks and black-and-white beach shoes, Lyster introduced Kelly to the first lieutenant, a bearded cynic called Bennett, and stood watching, as though assessing his new officer.

‘You given to worrying about superstition, Maguire?’ he asked.

Wondering what was coming, Kelly shook his head. ‘No, sir.’

Lyster nodded approvingly. ‘Keep it that way,’ he said. ‘
E19
was originally numbered
13
and on her trials she suddenly ran amuck and started porpoising all over Gare Loch. We couldn’t hold her. Forty seconds to thirty feet and then she was banging her guts out on the bottom and the next minute trying to leap out of the water like a porpoise.’

Bennett grinned. ‘Quite a time was had by all,’ he said.

‘I refused to sign for her,’ Lyster went on, ‘and she went back to the yard. In the end, it was decided it was her number that was wrong and it was changed to 19. Since then she seems to be all right. You’ll find this is a good ship. Including you, we have a crew of forty-two, plus one terrier and two white mice, which the Admiralty allows on the ship’s books to give warning of chlorine. Having less altitude, as the Flying Corps says, they die before we do, you see. Unfortunately, the family always seems to increase to six and that’s not allowed in the regulations, and doubtless the clerks at the Admiralty are still working out what to do about it. It will be one of your jobs to winnow ’em out if they get beyond that figure.’

He changed the subject abruptly to Rumbelo. ‘Noticed he had a DSM,’ he said. ‘Know anything about him?’

‘Yes, sir. I put him in for it. He’s an old friend.’

‘So much the better,’ Lyster said. ‘Makes for family feeling. Had leave lately?’

‘Before I did my course, sir.’

‘Well, you’re lucky. You’ll be getting some more. We all will. We’re due for the Middle East.’

‘What’s happening in the Middle East, sir?’

‘The Dardanelles.’

‘I thought that was over. The Turks sank half the Mediterranean Fleet with mines, didn’t they?’

Lyster shrugged. ‘The army’s decided they know more about it than we do and they’re going to take over and make a landing. We’re being sent out with three other submarines to try to get through the minefields to stop Turkish reinforcements coming across the Sea of Marmara.’

‘We’ll never do it, sir.’

Lyster smiled. ‘We already have,’ he said. ‘Norman Holbrook did it in
B11
.’

There was an odd sort of wariness about
E19
. Even the newcomers to the crew had heard of her strange antics on her trials and it seemed as if they were all waiting for the next example of wild behaviour. The interior of the boat was a mass of intricate machinery that restricted headroom, with a passageway through the middle scaled off, section by section, by bulkheads. There was no space to sling hammocks and the crew slept wherever they could, among the machinery or on the boards of the central passageway which covered the batteries, while the wardroom was nothing more than a curtained compartment smelling of damp and diesel oil, containing a table where the navigating was done – as often as not with one of the machinists working alongside – one bunk, and a single chair where the officer off watch passed what little leisure time he had. Above, so that it was almost impossible to stand upright, was an array of pipes, wheels and dials and the all-important glass face of the depth gauge. It was about as big as a henhouse and just about as comfortable, and at sea they had to live on the ‘hot-bunk’ principle of rolling into the bed just vacated by the man who’d relieved them. Under way it was impossible to speak without shouting because the rush of air down the shaft of the control tower, the whine of the steering gear and the roar of the engines drowned everything, and the stoker in the engine room even had to hit the steel plates of the deck with a spanner to attract the attention of his artificer.

They carried out working-up exercises in the north Channel but there was no sign of anything untoward until shortly before they were due for leave. Standing on the bridge with Kelly alongside him, Lyster was admiring his black-and-white beach shoes. He was not hard to get on with but was a great chaser of females, a sarcastic, sardonic man who seemed inordinately proud of his strange footwear.

‘Bought ’em in Worthing,’ he pointed out cheerfully. ‘When I was spending a week-end with a girl.’

Through the hatch opening they could hear the heavy diesel engines and the roar of the air they demanded and, below, a voice that sounded like Rumbelo’s was cheerfully singing a popular song which, with their destination known, had caught their particular fancy.

‘Oh, the moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin,

His suit wants pressin’,

His shoes want blackin’,

And his little baggy trousers they want mendin’

Before they send him

To the Dardanelles…’

There was a lop on the sea and the sky was hidden by low dark-bellied clouds. In the distance the land had lost its tawny hue and was a dark blue-grey, like cooling iron fresh from the furnace. A slash of spray came over and Lyster spat the salt water from his lips and brushed the drops from his leather coat. ‘We don’t permit ourselves the luxury of ducking, Maguire,’ he said severely as Kelly straightened up.

Occupied with thoughts of the Mediterranean, Kelly barely heard him. The war certainly seemed to move him about in great dramatic sweeps, but he was young enough nevertheless to enjoy the prospect. They were all well aware that the submarines were to be risked where the battleships had failed because they were cheap to build and more easily replaced, and if nothing else it would be different from tramping about the cobbled streets of Antwerp and from
Cressy
’s ponderous march across the Broad Fourteens.