Westbound, Warbound Read online

  ‘Wouldn’t have if he’d been steering for the Falklands, would it?’

  ‘No. I – I’m sorry. I just sort of assumed –’

  ‘Sort of know better next time, won’t you.’ The steward had put a plate in front of him. ‘Thank you, Jackson.’ Stabbing at a sausage with his fork. ‘Who incinerated these, Bloom or Hughes?’

  ‘Assistant Cook Hughes today, Captain.’

  ‘Might’ve known. Might’ve known.’ Reaching for the mustard. ‘I was going to ask you, Holt – how come you fetched up in the Blood Line? If I ever knew, I’ve forgotten. Your father with us at some time, was that it?’

  Andy swallowed and shook his head. ‘I took the first job I was offered, after Conway. My father was mostly with the Baron Line – from 1921 when he left the airship business – or it left him –’

  ‘Captain, sir…’

  Mervyn Clowes, junior wireless officer. He was eighteen, looked fifteen, came from Carmarthen and spent most of his off-watch time playing cribbage. Wireless officers were not technically-speaking Merchant Navy officers; although they wore uniform they were employees of Marconi International, who contracted them out to shipping lines. Clowes was offering the skipper a folded sheet of signal-pad, murmuring, ‘Just took this in, sir. Distress call.’ The skipper, peering at it with his eyes narrowed under the grey, jutting brows, would have found it easier if he’d put his glasses on, but for some reason was doing without them.

  ‘Damn it.’ Blinking. Addressing Halloran then: ‘Doric Star. Six-sixty miles east by south of St Helena. That must be – oh, heck…’

  Andy thinking to himself, couple of thousand miles away, must be… No – more than that. Visualising the chart and guessing that that distance east of St Helena would put the ship about halfway between the island and the coast of German Southwest. Two and a half thousand miles, say. And Doric Star was Blue Star Line, of course: 10,000 tons or so, her refrigerated holds doubtless packed with meat and other foodstuffs that now would not reach Britain. From Australia round the Cape, he guessed. The skipper had handed the signal back to Clowes: ‘Ask Mr Fisher to put it on the chart, tell him I’ll be up shortly.’ To the rest of them then: ‘It was the Graf Spee was at her. So the bugger is back this side of Africa.’

  * * *

  The southeastward diversion had lost them about three and a half hours, but if there was no further interruption PollyAnna should still make Montevideo by late afternoon on the 4th. Could in fact have ensured it by squeezing an extra half-knot out of her, but that would almost certainly have led to excessive smoke emission, and Hibbert wouldn’t have wanted to overstrain her anyway.

  The Doric Star’s RRR position, which Fisher had marked on the big chart, was in fact 2,750 nautical miles from the River Plate. So that guess hadn’t been far out, and seemed to indicate that the Spee was far enough away for the Anna to feel reasonably secure – at least, as far as that particularly feared predator was concerned. He said as much to Halloran, in the course of taking over the watch from him at eight that evening. They were studying the chart – Fisher’s marked EP – Estimated Position – which would be confirmed (or corrected) shortly by evening stars – and measuring the distance yet to be covered. Andy had made that comment about the Graf Spee presenting no threat to them in the immediate or near future, qualifying it with, ‘But since we don’t have a clue yet where we’ll be going after Montevideo –’

  ‘No need to look that far ahead, neither.’ Halloran stubbed out a cigarette. The chart table was at the after end of the wheelhouse, in a recess now fitted with a canvas curtain to keep light from spilling out. ‘Tell me this, for a start – what’s the Graf Spee’s best speed?’

  ‘About thirty knots?’

  ‘So she can make seven hundred miles a day when she needs to. Right?’

  He did the mental arithmetic and nodded. ‘Seven-twenty, at a pinch.’

  ‘So she could be off Monte in two shakes – eh?’

  ‘Well –’

  ‘When they’ve made a sinking, they shift as far and as fast as they bloody can. Plain sense – eh?’

  ‘I suppose they would. But –’

  ‘No buts, lad. What they do. Don’t sit there waiting for the Royal Navy to come calling, do they. So tell me this. You’re the Graf Spee’s skipper – you just sank the Doric Star, you need to move a good long way, smartish. Best economical speed – what, fifteen, eighteen knots? So you’re looking at this chart same as we are now, asking yourself – well, got to leg it anyway, may as well go some place where there’ll be targets. Where’ll you make for?’

  ‘The Cape, maybe.’

  ‘Where you’d meet warships coming north out of Simonstown? St Helena to the Cape’s not much of a change of area, neither. Likely patrolled, what’s more. Coming down here, though – where there’s more than a few of us fetching ore and that… Look – we’re in Monte day after tomorrow. December fourth. Discharging’ll take say a week. Nine days, even. Takes us to the eleventh or thirteenth – right?’ Black eyes intent, stubby hands spread: ‘She could be on the doorstep waiting for us – uh?’

  ‘Better pray she’s making for the Cape, then.’

  He took over the watch, and an hour later when Fisher was out there taking star-sights, Gorst noting down the chronometer times, he sent down orders for the ditching of stoke-hold ash and galley refuse. It had become a first watch routine by this time. Ashes were normally put overboard at the end of each watch, but in order not to leave floating trails for any raider to follow they were now dumped on deck and shovelled over after sundown; while gash during the day was tipped into forty-gallon drums suspended over the stern with permanently rigged tackle for up-ending them. During the dark hours the muck would sink or at any rate be widely enough dispersed by wave-action. These measures had been outlined in Trade Division (Admiralty) literature received when they’d been in Durban; they were intended primarily for application in the North Atlantic, U-boat waters, but the skipper had decided to implement them after the bunkering call at Cape Town.

  Fisher came back in with the figures from his sights, sextant cradled under his arm, and Andy heard him telling Gorst that he’d attend to this lot: he – Gorst – could go down and turn in; he’d be back up here as assistant watch-keeper/general dogsbody in less than three hours’ time in any case.

  Andy asked quietly, ‘Getting a soft heart, are we?’

  ‘Not all that soft. Worked him hard today. Poor sod’s got to get some kip.’

  The sights he’d taken were good and resulted in an adjustment of course from 268 degrees to 266. Distance to Montevideo 530 miles: at twelve and a half knots, ETA 1600 on the fourth.

  4

  They were meeting and crossing the paths of other steamers that night and on the third, had consequently given up the practice of turning stern-on to all newly sighted ships. Whatever came into sight you examined carefully, and at anything like close quarters played safe by switching on navigation lights and following the Rule of the Road. After midnight there’d been a good moon, in any case; its loom had been silvering the horizon when Andy had been turning over the watch to Fisher, and it had been well up, competing with the sun’s first efforts, when they’d met up here again for morning stars. There’d been a few ships in sight then, and were again during Andy’s forenoon watch – as one might have expected, with vessels of all nations using Montevideo and Buenos Aires, Mar del Plata, Bahia Blanca, Rio Grande, Porto Allegre, Santos, Rio de Janeiro, Vitoria, Salvador, Natal, Recife; or, southbound, the Magellan Strait en route to Chilean and Peruvian ports.

  Some playground for a pocket-battleship, he thought. With at least half of all this traffic flying the Red Ensign.

  The Old Man came back into the wheelhouse from the bridge-wing, where he’d been taking a look at a Spanish passenger-steamer to which Andy had perforce given way, passing two or three cables’ lengths under her stern, just minutes ago. Skipper wearing his reefer jacket unbuttoned over an open-necked shirt and a pair of old grey f
lannels; Andy remembering that when he’d first met him – on Clydeside for the formal signing of articles – his rig had been a brown serge suit and a bowler hat. Coming to a halt in the wheelhouse doorway now and mumbling – holding a match to the bowl of his pipe – ‘Wouldn’t trust that crowd not to let their Hun friends know where the pickings are.’

  ‘Think Spain’ll come in against us, sir?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. No secret where Franco’s sympathies lie though, is it.’

  She was back on course after that brief alteration, the helmsman intoning, ‘Two-six-six, sir.’ The Old Man said, ‘You were telling me, Holt – about your father, how he came out of airships, back where he belonged, you might say?’

  Andy nodded. ‘End of that war and afterwards he was with Vickers – lieutenant-commander in the RN Air Service, but in an Admiralty team working with them – Vickers – on rigid airships. Meaning Zeppelin type as distinct from the old blimps, dirigibles. Metal airships – one of ’em crossed the Atlantic and back in 1919. The old man was in on that – at the time he said they were all cock-a-hoop about it.’

  ‘Old man? Your father? How old is he?’

  ‘He’s – forty-six, or –’

  ‘If forty-six is old, Holt, I’m Methuselah.’

  ‘Well – manner of speaking… No, not old at all… But what sent him back to sea was the R38 disaster in 1921. She broke up in mid-air, on her trials. My father would’ve been on board her but he’d cried off because of – well, family crisis, my mother nearly dying giving birth to my sister Annabel. August 1921 – her birthday, how I can put the date to it – the crash, I mean. He’s always credited my sister with having saved his life. But it put an end to all that military development, and he chucked his hand in.’

  ‘Mother pulled through all right, eh?’

  ‘Oh, yes –’

  ‘And he was taken on by Hogarths – Baron Line, you said – as what?’

  ‘Junior officer, uncertificated. But with his record he had a head start, sat for all his certificates, put in the necessary sea-time and – well, caught up pretty quick.’

  ‘Would’ve needed to, with a wife and two children to support.’

  ‘Well – just family stuff, this, don’t want to bore you, sir – happened he’d sold his inherited share of my grandfather’s farms in Herefordshire to his sister and her husband. So he had a bit behind him – bought the house we have now at Helensburgh, for instance.’

  ‘Lucky blighter. Lucky it was 1921, too, not later when we hit rock-bottom. Must’ve kept up his annual RNR sea training, too – accounting for the defence courses, eh?’

  Andy nodded. ‘Since 1937 it’s been pretty well a full-time job. You’d have heard of him through that, I suppose.’

  ‘And Blood Line offered you a cadetship when you passed out of Conway.’

  ‘I was lucky too. Wasn’t the best of times, was it, thirty-four, thirty-five?’

  ‘It was a bloody awful time, Holt. And there were owners took full advantage of it. Most of ’em, you might say – kept their own bellies and pockets full while there were officers with masters’ tickets signing on as deckhands sooner than rot on shore, sell matches on street corners. But – low pay, foc’sl conditions not fit for pigs – a man could like it or lump it, there’d be a dozen trained seamen on any dockyard street corner only too ready to sign on in his place. Wouldn’t call it exactly ritzy now, but my God, compared to how it was…’

  Becoming talkative, this Old Man. Initially he’d hardly opened his mouth despite spending a lot of time on and around the bridge when he, Andy, had been on watch. In days gone by the 0800 to 1200 and the 2000 to midnight watches had been kept by ships’ masters; and a third mate being new to it customarily stood under his captain’s eye. In fact, PollyAnna had been halfway through the Mediterranean when he’d realised he was being left entirely on his own, had evidently passed muster.

  * * *

  During the forenoon, Don Fisher mustered his seven-man gun-crew and drilled them with a dummy projectile, while the bosun made a target out of vegetable crates lashed together. That was put over the side, and with Fisher spotting and correcting, they fired six rounds at it, bracketing it with the fourth and fifth shots and dropping the sixth so close that the splash obscured it. This was at a final range of 5,600 yards, measured by the Chernikeef log, distance covered from the moment of dropping the target overboard; he’d had young Gorst singing out the ranges. The skipper had authorised the expenditure of six rounds maximum, since they had only a couple of dozen and no certainty of where or when they’d get more.

  Cadet Janner had exclaimed, in the mate’s hearing, on the bridge-wing from where they’d been watching the show with plugs of cotton-waste in their ears, ‘That wasn’t at all bad, by golly!’ and Halloran asked him cuttingly, ‘Know much about it, do you?’

  ‘Not much, sir, no. But we did a gunnery course.’

  ‘Tell me this – why do we have it mounted aft, why not on the foc’sl-head?’

  ‘I’d say because’ – Janner screwing his eyes up, applying either memory or logic – ‘well, seeing as we’re civilians and the gun’s only for self-defence – on the poop because in any action we’d be trying to run for it?’

  ‘That’s the theory.’ A shrug. ‘If you can imagine us with our twelve knots running from the Graf Spee with her thirty?’

  * * *

  Andy wrote to his father that afternoon, before getting his head down for a couple of hours.

  We’re new at all this, of course, complete beginners – at whatever there is ahead of us, I mean. All guesses and theory – not having experienced anything of the sort as yet, I just hope we’ll find we’re up to it. I suppose that’s what most men worry about, at such times. My skipper was at sea in the last one, so was the chief engineer – and the bosun, as it happens – but apart from those we’re greenhorns. You knew it very well, of course, and knowing where you are and what you’re in I guess you’ll already have seen quite a bit of this one. My captain, I may say without breaking too many rules about security, had wind just recently of the loss of an AMC but not her name, made a point of finding out before I heard of it, because it occurred to him that it might have been your ship; he is, I may say, a very decent sort. I think I mentioned before, he recognised your name, knew all about the defence courses you were running. He’s 59, by the way, been at sea near enough half a century.

  Now I’m going to grab some kip, finish this later or perhaps tomorrow – when we’ll be within reach of a post box. Touch wood, we will!

  Odd, he thought, his mind drifting as he transferred from desk to bunk, it felt as if he’d been writing to an older brother, rather than to his father.

  * * *

  Soon after four he doused his head in cold water and went up a deck and outside, leant on the now grey-painted rail that ran around this midships superstructure, looking down on to the fore-deck where the bosun had men at work overhauling and greasing winches and five-ton derricks – and on the foc’sl-head, the steam windlass and other anchor gear – prior to arrival in Montevideo and as likely as not having to use the ship’s own gear for discharging her coal. They’d evidently passed through more rain while he’d been sleeping; decks and hatch-covers were steaming, raising a mist that drifted astern over the sizzling, spreading wake. The swell was lower, as she approached the shelter of the land, the ocean not ridged, just heaving, like some great beast sleeping one off; there was very little movement on the ship, only this steady, rhythmic lunging, so regular you barely noticed it. Current would still be westerly, he guessed, but by sunset would need watching; even now, still 300 miles offshore, you might be getting into the southerly flowing Brazil Current, which complicated matters just off the Plate by coming head to head with what was known as the Falklands Current – an offshoot of the Cape Horn one.

  Don Fisher’s concern, of course, not one’s own. Although next time – or in a year or two, say – it might be. He went inside, paused to light a
cigarette then continued aft and down again on his way to the saloon. It was a substantial block of accommodation, this bridge ‘island’, including two two-berth passenger cabins intended originally for use by the ship’s owners or their more important customers – shippers, charterers. They were on the same level as the master’s quarters, i.e. one level below the bridge. One of them had been allocated to the chief engineer and the other to Halloran, freeing what would have been their cabins for use by Don Fisher and the second engineer, McAlan. Those were on that same level, as was a cramped three-berther used by the wireless officers, whose W/T office was immediately abaft it. Andy’s small cabin, and the third and fourth engineers’ and one shared by the cadets were on the next level down, which was also the saloon deck.

  This one. Those four cabins, and the washplace, then the saloon, and abaft it the pantry and galley. He pushed into the saloon to get himself a mug of tea, and Fisher looked up from one he’d had his nose in.

  ‘Good grief. Bestirring ourselves, at last…’

  He passed around the long table, en route to the pantry hatch. It wasn’t much past four; Fisher couldn’t have been down from the bridge for more than a few minutes. There were several others at the table – not that this was any sort of mealtime. ‘Tea’ – or supper – was normally laid on at five, although in harbour it could be as late as seven. Andy nodded to the assistant steward through the sliding hatch: ‘Tea please, Watkins.’ Then to Fisher, ‘Are we in the Brazil Current yet, d’you reckon?’

  ‘Time will tell. Should be, though, I’m allowing for it. Stars tonight will put us right. But listen – the bugger’s done it again.’

  ‘Which bugger’s done what?’

  Shaw, third engineer – whose particular responsibility was the ship’s electrics – cut in with a supposedly German-intonated scream of ‘The Herr Admiral Graf Spee, no less!’ Fisher winced, shaking his head, and told Andy, ‘Distress call from a ship by name Taroa. Furness Withy, eight thousand tons, the Old Man knew of her. Six hundred miles west of where the Doric Star was caught – and the interval was thirty hours, so the Spee’s been on west-southwest at twenty knots.’