Читать книгу Kerrell - Henry Taprell Dorling - Страница 9

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ACCORDING to someone who should have known better, the war, so far as the navy was concerned, was said to have resolved itself into ‘periods of dreary monotony punctuated by moments of intense excitement.’

This may have been partially true of the battleships of the Grand Fleet based upon Scapa Flow, which, as the months wore on and enemy submarine activity and minelaying increased, spent less time at sea than during the first feverish outburst of activity in the autumn of 1914. There was no sense in exposing costly and irreplaceable battleships to the danger of mines and submarines merely to carry out haphazard sweeps of the North Sea on the off-chance of finding something to engage. Everybody had expected a fleet action at the very opening of the war, but as the days lengthened into weeks, and the weeks into months, it became more and more evident that the German High Command did not intend to risk the High Seas Fleet in battle.

What the enemy did not seem to realize, however, was that from comparatively early in the war, all their important wireless messages were intercepted and de-coded by expert cryptographers at the Admiralty in London. By this means, and by other grains of intelligence obtained or deduced from here, there, and everywhere, any intended enemy movement on a large scale was known with tolerable certainty before it took place. Then was the time to send the British Grand Fleet to sea.

As a collective force, the High Seas Fleet remained safely and snugly in its harbours, while the offensive was carried on mainly by submarines. It was early in February, 1915, indeed, that the German Admiralty issued its declaration proclaiming all the waters surrounding Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole of the English Channel, to be a war zone in which all British merchant vessels would be liable to destruction ‘without its being always possible to avoid danger to the crews and passengers.’ Neutral ships, the manifesto added, would also be exposed to danger in the same area, and in view of the fact that the British Government had countenanced the use of foreign flags by British ships (a legitimate ruse of war, let it be added), and the unforeseen incidents to which naval warfare was liable, it would be impossible to avoid attacks on neutral ships in mistake for British.

So far as the light-cruisers, destroyers, and other small craft were concerned, however, and particularly the light-cruisers and destroyers of the Harwich Force and at Dover, the war was never dull and monotonous. Far from it. There was always something going on, and the ships seemed invariably to be at sea.

Toby never forgot one occasion, when, after four days and nights at sea for an air-raid on the Zeppelin sheds at Tondern, an enterprise which eventually had to be postponed on account of fog and bad weather, the cruisers and destroyers returned to Harwich in the early morning. After completing with oil-fuel, they secured to their buoys and reverted to four hours’ notice for steam, congratulating themselves on the prospect of a couple of days in harbour which could usefully be employed in making good minor defects and in making up for arrears of sleep.

By the usual perversity of fate the bad weather of the past few days had given way to glorious sunshine with hardly a cloud in the sky. Everything was calm and peaceful, and by 1 p.m., as usual, a proportion of the Libyan’s officers and men had been allowed ashore until six.

Hendry, the skipper, who was married and had a house in Dovercourt, had gone to see his wife. Pardoe, the sub, and Hartopp, the ‘young doc,’ had gone ashore together to take some much-needed exercise in the shape of a strenuous walk, while Foley, the nineteen-year-old Royal Naval Reserve midshipman, who had recently joined the ship, had landed on some mysterious errand about which he had been rather secretive. According to Mr. Huxtable, the gunner (T) who had constituted himself Foley’s ‘sea daddy,’ the snotty, as they all called him, was badly smitten by the charms of a young woman in a tobacco shop at Harwich—“one o’ them tow-’eaded hee-haw kind no better’n they should be,” as the gunner expressed it. In other words, Mr. Midshipman Foley, free once more from the bonds of parental discipline and more or less his own master, was embroiled in his first love-affair, an affair which Toby, as honorary keeper of Mr. Foley’s morals, was wondering how he could tactfully terminate.

So half-past two in the afternoon found Mutters blissfully snoring in his bunk with his scuttle curtains drawn, Kerrell slumbering in an arm-chair in the wardroom with the black kitten curled up on his lap, and Mr. Huxtable in his cabin with his coat off writing his weekly letter to his wife at Portsmouth. Except for the quartermaster on deck and the signalman on the bridge, the rest of the ship’s company, laid out on the stools, tables, and lockers on the mess-decks like so many corpses, were also sleeping the sleep of the just.

It was at two-thirty-seven precisely by the chart-house clock that the yawning signalman, having lit a surreptitious cigarette, suddenly whipped the telescope from under his arm and levelled it at some flags creeping to the masthead of the commodore’s light-cruiser, the Arethusa, a mile and a half down the river. A momentary glance was enough. The top flags were the distinguishing signals for the light-cruisers and the two flotillas of destroyers, while beneath them appeared two flags together—the top one red and triangular in shape, the bottom one square and divided diagonally into yellow and red.

“Sufferin’ Susan!” he exclaimed, rushing to the after side of the bridge and bawling to the quartermaster, who, longing for four o’clock when he also could get his head down after ‘a nice cup o’ tea,’ was aft by the gangway.

“What’s up with you, buntin’?” the leading seaman hailed, strolling casually forward.

“Q.O.’s hoisted!” the signalman roared. “Raise steam with all dispatch an’ report when ready!—Tell the first-lootenant an’ engineer orficer, there’s a good chap!”

The quartermaster, galvanized into activity, ran aft and disappeared down a hatchway like a startled rabbit. Even as he vanished the signal was being repeated at the mastheads of all the other ships in the harbour: Q.O.—the emergency signal to raise steam, the signal which might mean that the enemy were at sea.

The general recall for all officers and men ashore to return to their ships forthwith was hoisted by the Arethusa and repeated, and within a minute the still afternoon became dismal and raucous with the prolonged howling of many syrens as one light-cruiser after another took up the tale. The doleful sound, echoing over the countryside, could hardly avoid being heard in Harwich and Dovercourt, in every place where officers or men might congregate, in each house, in every road and every lane. Those ashore were not allowed more than a certain distance from their ships.

The Libyan woke up. Stokers and engine-room artificers, rubbing their sleepy eyes, appeared blinking from their messes and vanished into stokeholds and engine-room. Seamen followed them, to set about reeving boats’ falls and slip-rope, and making other preparations for sea. The motor-boat, with the whaler in tow, presently left the ship to bring off the officers and men ashore, while an ever-thickening cloud of black oil-fuel smoke rolled from the Libyan’s three funnels as she hurriedly raised steam. The reek pouring out of the funnels of every cruiser and destroyer present soon lay over the river like a funeral pall.

“And I was looking forward to a night in!” the engineer-lieutenant-commander grumbled with a prodigious yawn, as he paced the upper deck with Kerrell. “War’s a bloody business!”

“Bloody isn’t the word for it,” the first-lieutenant agreed, watching the oily, black smuts raining down on his paintwork—paintwork that had only been renovated that morning and was still tacky. “Look at that muck! Look at it! Do I ever get a chance of keeping the ship even fairly decent?”

Mutters, who had heard this sort of thing before, took no notice.

“What’s in the wind, d’you think?” he inquired, changing the subject. “Is it a pukka show this time, or only one of these blasted spasms?”

‘Spasms,’ ‘flaps,’ or ‘panics,’ as they were variously called, had occurred again and again, when ships had been ordered to raise steam with all possible speed, only to have it cancelled by the signal ‘Revert to usual notice for steam’ when everybody had been recalled from leave and all vessels were ready to slip from their buoys. And more often than once ‘Q.O.’ had been made and cancelled twice or three times in the course of twenty-four hours.

“Are we really going to sea, or are we not?” Mutters asked again.

“Blowed if I know,” Kerrell replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “I’m no blinkin’ oracle. What’s really worrying me is how long it’ll take us to get all our braves on board. When will you have steam, chief?”

The engineer looked at his wrist-watch.

“We’re allowed a couple of hours,” he answered. “But I’m pushing things. So far as the engines and kettles are concerned, we’ll be ready to move in an hour and a half—say at ten or twenty past four.”

“Then I hope to heaven they’ve all heard the recall,” the first-lieutenant observed, gazing anxiously shorewards.

“I hope to heaven the wardroom steward has!” Mutters grunted. “We’ve hardly a bite of food left on board, the gunner tells me. D’you remember the time the fool got left behind and we lived for nearly a week on corned beef and ship’s biscuit?”

“And tinned rabbit and the coxswain’s haricot beans,” Kerrell put in with a laugh. “Lord! That was an empty-belly trip, if you like.”

The chief made a wry face at the recollection.

“I wonder if the bloke in the contract department at the Admiralty who invented tinned rabbit has ever eaten the beastly stuff?” he asked. “It’s like eating chewed blotting-paper mixed up with boiled string with a few bones chucked in here and there for the sake of local colour. Ugh! I wonder they even trouble to skin the beasts!”

“They wouldn’t, unless they used the fur for making hats. All our tinned rabbit comes from Australia. The men won’t look at it. They say the Admiralty buys up all the carcases cheap, boil ’em, shove ’em in tins, and then serve ’em out to the simple sailors. But the simple sailors aren’t having any, bless their hearts, and I don’t blame ’em.—Well, Thomas?” he broke off, as a petty-officer came up and saluted.

“Shall we carry on unshackling from the buoy, sir?”

Toby looked over the side and gauged the strength of the tide.

“I’ll come forward and see to it,” he said.

Ashore, meanwhile, officers and men were streaming back to the landing-places at Harwich and Parkeston Quay, where the boats were waiting to take them off to their ships. They came not singly, but in droves, some afoot, some on bicycles, others crowded into taxis or private cars, sitting on each other’s laps and hanging precariously on the running-boards. Every now and then a pedestrian, fearful of being left behind, broke into a run.

By three-forty-five, to Toby’s infinite relief, the last of the Libyan’s liberty men had returned to the ship and the boats were being hoisted. A quarter of an hour later, even sooner than he had originally thought, Mutters went down to the captain’s cabin to report the engines ready. Shortly afterwards Hendry himself appeared on the bridge and the signal ‘Ready to proceed’ fluttered from the masthead. It was acknowledged by the answering pendant from the light-cruiser which carried the Captain (D) in command of the flotilla.

“Better get the hands to their stations, first-lieutenant,” the captain said, as ship after ship reported herself ready. “We’ll be off at any moment—but have a couple of fenders and a boat-rope ready the starboard side. I see the dispatch boat’s going round. She may not reach us until after we’ve slipped.”

Kerrell left the bridge and spoke to the boatswain’s mate at the foot of the ladder.

“Special sea duty-men to your stations!” the man shouted after a preliminary twitter from his pipe. “Ha-ands to stations for leaving harbour!”

The ship’s company fell in on quarter-deck and forecastle. The fat torpedo coxswain climbed ponderously on to the bridge and took the wheel. His acolytes, the engine-room telegraph men, took their stations beside him. For some minutes they waited, every glass on the bridge turned in the direction of the Arethusa.

“Signal to slip, sir!” the signalman shouted, as a pair of flags crept up to the cruiser’s masthead, to be repeated or answered by the four other cruisers and upwards of thirty destroyers.

“Signal’s down, sir!”

Hendry, after a glance at the destroyers at the buoys ahead and astern, walked to the fore side of the bridge.

“Slip!” he ordered.

Kerrell nodded, and a man on the forecastle struck with a hammer. The slip flew open, and the end of a wire disappeared through the bull-ring to fall into the water with a splash.

“All clear, sir!” came Kerrell’s hail, as he looked over the bows and the wire was hauled in.

The buoy, relieved of the ship’s weight, surged ahead through the water.

“Half ahead port—Slow astern starboard—Hard a’port!” the captain ordered, his eye on the buoy.

The engine-room telegraph reply gongs tinkled and the helm went over. The stokehold fans started to rumble and the haze at the tops of the funnels deepened as the water swirled and eddied under the Libyan’s stern. Swinging to starboard, she started slowly to move ahead.

“Half astern starboard!” came another order. “Ease to fifteen, coxswain!”

“Fifteen it is, sir!”

The ship lost headway and began to pivot on her heel. Three minutes later she was jogging slowly down harbour on the last of the ebb, waiting to take her station in the line.

In less than five minutes more the whole of the Harwich Force, some thirty-seven strong, was in motion and proceeding towards the harbour mouth, the ships gradually falling into their stations in the long single line.

It was not until she had travelled for nearly half a mile down-stream that the Libyan stopped her engines to allow the belated dispatch boat to come alongside. A letter addressed to the captain was handed up by a marine orderly. Kerrell took it to the bridge.

Tearing open the usual two envelopes Hendry glanced at the contents.

“Keep an eye on the ship, first-lieutenant,” he said, seeing the length of the typewritten document.

For five minutes, while Kerrell kept station on the next ahead, the captain was busy reading.

“Lord!” he exclaimed at last, permitting himself to smile a little. “This looks like the real thing. Here, first-lieutenant, have a look at it. I’ll look out for the ship.”

He handed the paper across.

Never before had Hendry shared any secret with his subordinates. Never once had he told Kerrell what was contained in his sailing orders, far less shown them to him. But to-day, for some inscrutable reason, he was more communicative, and seemed anxious to share his news. He actually looked pleased and cheerful—for once, quite human. What had come over the man?

Kerrell, marvelling at the change, took the typewritten paper and read. One of many hectographed copies, it was marked ‘Secret’ and signed by the Commodore himself. The opening paragraph ran as follows:

“A flotilla of eleven enemy destroyers is expected to leave Wilhelmshaven at 2 p.m. to-day to relieve one of the flotillas now at Zeebrugge. It will probably proceed south, skirting the Dutch coast.

“Take the necessary steps to intercept and bring them to action. Cruisers and destroyers are not to proceed into mined areas or neutral waters unless in actual contact with the enemy. Vice-Admiral Dover has been notified, and may have destroyers at Thornton Ridge from midnight. No British submarines are at sea in the area.”

The memorandum went on to give in detail the positions and movements of the Harwich Force during the night, and in its final paragraph emphasized the necessity for strict wireless silence except for the usual reports if the enemy were sighted.

“It certainly looks like business, sir,” Kerrell agreed, handing the document back to the captain as the little ship rounded Landguard Fort in the wake of her next ahead.

“It might,” Hendry said. “However, have the positions plotted on the chart. I’ll look at them later.”

Toby went to the chart-house, where for some minutes he and Pardoe were busy with parallel rulers and dividers.

Drawn roughly on a signal pad, the Commodore’s plan seemed quite simple and effective. Its success depended upon the authenticity of the information of the enemy’s movements upon which it was based.

The indented line H Z represented the Dutch coast from the Hague and past the mouths of the Schelde to Zeebrugge in Belgium, a distance of about fifty miles. Z represented Zeebrugge itself, and M the Maas Lightship off the Hook of Holland. At 10 p.m. the Commodore, with all his light-cruisers and eight destroyers—Force A—was to be seven miles west of the Maas, and would start patrolling a line, fifteen miles long, running approximately south-west and north-east. His speed would be fifteen knots, and he would turn every hour. The other destroyers were to be divided into three groups, each consisting of a flotilla-leader and seven or eight T.B.D.’s to be known as Forces B, C, and D. Disposed in triangular formation twelve miles apart, with B at the bottom of the triangle about seven miles south-east of the Commodore’s group, they also were to patrol south-west and north-east at a speed of fifteen knots, turning each hour. The enemy, coming south along the coast, could hardly avoid being sighted by one or another of them if the weather remained clear. All ships were particularly cautioned not to leave their patrol lines unless specifically ordered to do so, or in actual contact with the enemy. The reason for this was obvious. Four separate groups steaming about the ocean at high speed on a dark night might lead to regrettable incidents in which friend might open fire upon friend.

“Which lot are we?” Hendry inquired, glancing at Kerrell’s diagram.

“Force B, sir, at the bottom here.”

The captain pursed his lips.

“I should think the bunch at C have the best chance,” he grunted.

“It seems rather on the lap of the gods, sir,” Kerrell replied. “A mere matter of luck.”

“Is there a moon to-night?” Hendry asked, glancing overhead at the dappled sky.

“No, sir.”

“So much the better. If we do sight ’em, it’ll be at fairly close quarters, and something’s bound to happen.”

By the time the sun had set in a riot of scarlet and orange and purple, the Harwich Force had left Orfordness and the Shipwash Light-vessel behind. An hour later darkness had come, and with every light extinguished, and guns and torpedo-tubes manned, cruisers and destroyers were steaming eastward at twenty knots. There was hardly a breath of wind. The sea was glassy and the visibility good. Everything—everything now depended upon clear weather and the absence of fog.