The Lion at Sea (24 page)

‘Andrew Cunningham of
Scorpion
told me that the destroyers patrolling the beaches say they can hear Johnny Turk digging trenches like billy-o,’ Bennett said. ‘They’re shoving new gun positions up all over the shop, and they could even hear ’em driving in stakes and erecting barbed wire. They passed it on to the High Altar but nobody seems to be making preparations for landing troops under fire.’

Despite the rumours, there was an immense enthusiasm everywhere and nobody appeared to think of failure, and the troops lining the decks of the transports shouted and cat-called to one another, cheering every ship that departed or arrived. On April 24th, they heard that the Australian submarine,
AE2
, had been ordered to make the attempt to pierce the Narrows and reach the Sea of Marmara and she vanished eastwards just as the orders to start the military operation arrived.

The ships began to move out at once, steaming for their rendezvous off the Turkish beaches. All painted grey or black, they headed for the entrance to the harbour in line ahead, and in all the ships that were to remain behind, the men lined the rails to cheer.

Kelly watched them with a strange feeling of sadness. Despite the laughter, the air seemed supercharged with emotion. In France, attacks such as the one these men were approaching had ended in windrows of dead. As the ships passed, the soldiers were singing in surprisingly sweet voices that left a bewildering sense of loneliness. Doubtless, out of sight, harassed officers were checking lists but the excitement aboard the transports reached out to every other vessel in the harbour, and Kelly, aware that he was looking at history, felt his heart thumping against the wall of his chest.

As they passed
E19
, Lyster ordered his men up on the superstructure and they yelled and waved as yellow dust blew from the shore in the brassy sunshine. They could feel the grit in their teeth as they paid their compliments to the passing army, but there seemed to be no sense of foreboding among the khaki-clad figures lining the rails of the troopships. On one vessel, an elderly merchant captain sailed past, holding his cap high in the air in answer. Not once did he lower the cap, merely changing it from one hand to the other as he passed the naval vessels.

During the day they thought they could hear the fleet’s guns on the wind but no one could be sure and they waited impatiently for news of the landing. By evening a few ugly rumours arrived and it soon became clear from the snippets that reached them that the assault had not been the success that had been expected. In spite of victory in one or two places, for the most part only a toehold here and there had been achieved and the troops were already exhausted.

They were in deep gloom when a signal arrived to say that
AE2
had passed through the Narrows and had torpedoed a Turkish gunboat, and a cheer rang through
E19
. Further information, however, indicated that for
AE2
’s solitary success she had used up every torpedo she possessed. Failing her again and again, they had run too deeply or off course and her victims had escaped.

Since it seemed good sense to take a closer look at the entrance to the straits, Kelly had himself put aboard the destroyer,
Scorpion
, which was engaged in giving fire support to the troops ashore. Cunningham, her captain, was a smooth-faced, smiling man not a great deal older than Kelly but possessed of enormous self-confidence, one of the new young commanding officers thrown up by the war. He handled his ship well and there seemed to be an enormous feeling of solidarity between him and his crew.

Battleships and cruisers offshore were shelling the Turkish positions and Kelly could see the vast fountains of earth, dirt and smoke leaping into the sky. The sea was flat calm and shining like a looking glass, and destroyers crammed with men and towing boats carrying still more of them kept closing the beach, and they could occasionally see lines of small figures moving forward, crumbling, and moving forward again. The Turkish gunfire didn’t appear very heavy and was slow and ill-directed but one gun firing out to sea was particularly troublesome and was already known to
Scorpion
’s
crew as ‘The Wrath of God.’

Some neat problems in naval bombardment were being taken in their stride, however. Discovering that the flat trajectory of the four-incher could not reach its target without hitting the top of a cliff occupied by allied troops, Cunningham had solved the difficulty quite simply by ordering the charges cut in half with a knife. A signal to the flagship for a range table for half-charges brought a prompt response and the gun was used as a howitzer.

‘Doubt if it would obtain the approval of the pundits at Whale Island,’ Cunningham said with a grin.

While
E19
chafed,
E14
was sent off to follow
AE2
through the straits and, with
E11
under repairs,
E19
was ordered to make ready to follow at once. Twenty-four hours later
E14
signalled that she, too, was through the straits and
E19
was told to stand by. All day they waited their turn but then they heard that the French were determined to have some part in the affair and a share in any glory that was going and had insisted on their own submarine,
Joule
, having a shot. A few hours after her departure however,
Adamant
picked up a Turkish signal announcing that she’d been sunk, and the same night a message in English from the German cruiser
Breslau
announced that
AE2
had also been destroyed.

Lyster’s face was bleak. ‘Thought the odds were beginning to turn rather in our favour,’ he said. ‘Instead, overnight, they seem to have tipped a little t’other way. Let’s check this bloody boat again. We don’t want that damned jinx taking over at the wrong moment.’

By this time the land battle was raging furiously, and it became important that another submarine should make the attempt to slow down the Turkish supplies. With Lyster nervously sitting on everybody’s neck to make sure they did their inspections properly, Kelly was ordered aboard
Lord Nelson
to receive their orders from the Chief of Staff.

Keyes turned as he entered his cabin, an angular, ugly figure, ‘Where’s Commander Lyster?’ he demanded.

‘He’s worried about the boat, sir. He preferred to check everything personally.’

‘Doesn’t he have a first lieutenant for that sort of thing?’

‘
E19
’s rather a special case, sir. She has a lot of bad habits.’

Keyes seemed satisfied with the explanation. He was a tall, well-decorated man with a large mouth, large ears and long neck. Despite the broad ring of a commodore, however, his manner was brisk and friendly. ‘I’ve heard of you, haven’t I? When I was Commodore, Submarines. You’re the chap who was decorated for bringing half the British army out of Antwerp.’

‘Yes, sir. It all sprang from the mistaken belief that I speak French. It seems to haunt me, sir. Even here.’

Keyes’ mouth widened in a grin and he thrust forward a packet. ‘Here are your orders. The Turkish battleships,
Turgut
Reiss
and
Heireddin Barbarossa
, are to be considered priority targets because their forward gun turrets have been replaced by howitzers that can lob 16-inch shells over the hills on to our beaches. Any questions.

‘No, sir.’

‘Putting a submarine successfully through the Dardanelles will have much the same effect as putting a ferret down a rabbit hole. Battleships will be operating in the entrance to the straits in support of the army, so we can expect mines to be launched in the Narrows. You’re to endeavour to hamper the movements of minelayers and generally run amuck in the Marmara. Report by W/T as soon as you’re through.’

It was after midnight as they made their way towards the entrance to the Dardanelles. It was a lovely night, clear and calm, with a moon and a myriad stars throwing a pale light on the sea; and the escorting destroyer, seamen’s hammocks lashed round the bridge against splinters, was a silent black shape on the smooth water.

The air was warm and from the conning tower they could smell the land, a musky smell that was a compound of dust and smoke and cut grass and another sicklier scent that they knew came from unburied bodies exposed to the sun. Through the hatch floated a snatch of song – ‘Oh, the moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin’ – and Kelly frowned, wondering how many of the men who’d sung it so often in Mudros Harbour were now contributing to that wretched scent that floated out to them from the land.

Lyster was wearing his knickerbockers and tartan stockings but, despite his strange gear, he was in a sober mood and had held prayers on the superstructure before they’d left. While still ten miles from the entrance to the straits they could see the beam of a searchlight on the Asiatic shore, probing towards them.

‘Kum Kale,’ Lyster said.

Above the hum of the engines, the rumble of distant guns came on the breeze and they could see the flashes of bursting shells flickering against the land. Beyond the pale beam of light that probed the entrance, there were other searchlights moving about on the northern shore.

There was a thin streak of unease in Kelly’s mind, a feeling of foreboding and fear. It’s just a touch of the hump, he kept telling himself, yet deep down the bitter, old and wrinkled truth was that he didn’t trust
E19
. Would she behave as she had in the Channel before they’d left England? She had never run wild since, but there was no guarantee that she wouldn’t.

He had written two letters before he’d left, one to his mother, in which he informed her that he hoped he’d always be able to bring her credit whatever happened to him – a straightforward duty letter to someone he supposed he loved but wasn’t sure about because he rarely saw her. The other was to Charley and in it he admitted that he was scared stiff but that, since everybody else was being brave, he expected he would be, too. He tried hard to tell her he loved her but, doubtful of the truth of the statement and even uncertain of its meaning, he drew back at the last moment and the rest of the letter remained merely chit-chat.

He forced his attention to the job on hand. More searchlights seemed to be coming on and against the spill of their light he could see the contours of the land.

‘Cape Helles, oh-three-four degrees, sir,’ he called out. ‘Kum Kale one-two-nine.’

There was land, black against the sky, on both sides of them now and heavy shells occasionally whooshed over their heads with an unstable hissing noise towards the British lines.

‘And his little baggy trousers they want mendin’…’

The song came again and Lyster barked an order through the hatch. ‘Shut up, that man,’ he said and the song came to a sudden stop. ‘Keep silence down there, Number One. There must be no mistakes.’

They had planned to enter the straits after the moon had set, and proceed on the surface as long as possible to conserve the batteries, but so slowly the wash would not attract attention from the shore. At first light in the morning, they would dive. As they arrived at the entrance, the moon was still just above the water, picking up the white cliffs of the shore, and they waited by the side of the black and sinister-looking destroyer for the moment to go. The perfect stillness of the night accentuated the tension, then, as the moon slipped away, swallowed by its own silver path along the sea, they crept away from the destroyer’s side and headed at seven knots for the centre of the straits, only the popple of the engines and the slap of the water against the hull to break the silence.

Lyster seemed tense and agitated. ‘Those bloody diesels sound louder than I’ve ever heard ’em,’ he grumbled. ‘Somebody ashore’s bound to pick ’em up.’

Everything was ready for instant diving, only Kelly on the bridge with Lyster, all the others below waiting for the alarm. The black outline of the hills was sharp against the sky but there was no sign that they’d been spotted.

‘Perhaps the gunfire drowns the noise,’ Lyster commented.

As he spoke, two enemy searchlights lit up the southern shore, one at Kephez Point, the second one a little lower, and began to sweep the waters with their long beams, touching the outline of the conning tower with silver. A more powerful light at Chanak threw a beam of a yellower hue as it searched the higher reaches. As they drew nearer, it seemed about to pick them up when the Kephez light went out abruptly, and they were able to proceed further on the surface than they’d hoped. Then the clear ray from Kephez sprang on again and Lyster called out ‘Diving stations.’ As they scrambled below, he slammed the hatch shut above them, and dead slow, at twenty feet, they continued within a mile of the European shore until the periscope showed the faint contours of the hills on the northern side.

‘We’re abeam of Achi Baba,’ Lyster said. ‘Start the motors. Flood main ballast,’

Metal clanged on metal as orders echoed back and forth.

‘Open One and Two Kingstons and One and Two Main Vents.’

‘Number One full. Number Two full.’

‘Flood Three.’

Water thundered into the tanks and
E19
settled deeper into the water. For a long time no one spoke, then Lyster ordered the boat up to thirty feet.

‘Periscope up!’

Putting his face to the rubber eyepiece, he glanced round, then slapped the periscope handles up.

‘Down periscope,’ he said. ‘Take her down to eighty feet.’

Apart from the diving hands, the crew had fallen out and were crouched over steaming mugs of cocoa when there was a metallic clang forward. Heads came up at once and they listened in dead silence as the sound moved along the outside of the hull.

‘Stop port!’ Lyster snapped.

The telegraph rang and the port propeller stopped. The ominous sound grew and filled the control room. It was as if an enormous door was slowly being dragged open on rust-stiffened hinges. They had picked up a mine wire and somewhere at the end of it there was a mine, its horns ready to break off at the slightest touch and allow sea water to get in to spark off its firing circuit.