Atlantic Fury (15 page)

As a result, Colonel Standing took no action. There was not, in fact, much he could have done at that stage, but another commander might have thought it worth walking across to the Met. Office for a local weather briefing. There may have been something personal in the fact that Standing didn't do this; he was a man of narrow moral outlook – and knowing Cliff's record he probably disliked him.

I missed the one-forty shipping forecast for I was lying in my bunk at the time. I wasn't asleep. I was just lying there because it was easier to lie down than to stand up, and even flat on my back I had to hang on. The ship was lurching very violently and every now and then there was an explosion like gunfire and the whole cabin shivered. McDermott was groaning in the bunk ahead of me. The poor devil had long since brought up everything but his guts; twice he'd been thrown on to the floor.

About four in the afternoon I got up, paid a visit to the heads and had a wash. The heads were on the starboard side and from the porthole, I had a windward view; it was an ugly-looking sea, made more ugly by the fact that we were passing through a squall. Daylight was obscured by the murk so that it was almost dark. Visibility was poor, the seas very big with a rolling thrust to their broken tops and the spindrift whipped in long streamers by the wind.

I went down the alleyway to the wheelhouse. Stratton had taken over. He stood braced against the chart table staring out of the for'ard porthole. He was unshaven and the stubble of his beard looked almost black in that strange half light. A sudden lurch flung me across the wheelhouse. He turned as I fetched up beside him. ‘Glad to see you haven't succumbed.' He smiled, but the smile didn't reach his eyes, and his face was beginning to show the strain. ‘My DR puts us about there.' He pencilled a small circle on the chart. Measuring the distance from Laerg by eye against minutes of latitude shown on the side of the chart it looked as though we still had about eighteen miles to go. But I knew his dead reckoning couldn't be exact in these conditions.

‘Will you make it before dark?' I asked.

He shrugged. ‘We're down to six knots. Glass falling, wind backing and increasing. It came up like a line squall. Some sort of trough, I imagine.' He passed me the log. Barometric pressure was down to 976, wind speed 40—45 knots – force 9. ‘Looks as though the weather boys have slipped up.' He gave me the one-forty shipping forecast. ‘If the wind increases any more before we get under the lee in Shelter Bay, we're going to have to turn and run before it.' He glanced at the radar. It was set to maximum range – 30-miles; but the sweep lights showed only a speckle of dots all round the screen. The probing eye was obscured by the squall, confused by the breaking seas. ‘We'll pick up Laerg soon.' It was less of a statement than an endeavour to convince himself and I had a feeling he was glad of my company. ‘Ever sailed in these waters?' He switched the Decca to 15-mile range.

‘No,' I said. ‘But the Pacific can be quite as bad as the North Atlantic and the Indian Ocean isn't all that pleasant during the monsoon.'

‘I've never commanded a proper ship,' he said. ‘Always landing craft.' And after a moment he added, ‘Considering what they're designed for, they're amazingly seaworthy. But they still have their limitations. They'll only take so much.' As though to underline his point a towering wall of water rose above the starboard bow, toppled and hit with a crash that staggered the ship. Water poured green over the sides, cascading like a waterfall into the well of the tank deck. I watched the pumps sucking it out through the gratings and wondered how long they would be able to cope with that sort of intake. The steward appeared with two mugs of tea. A cut on his forehead was oozing blood and there was blood on the mugs as he thrust them into our hands, balancing precariously to the surge and swoop as we plunged over that big sea.

‘Everything all right below decks, Perkins?'

‘Pretty fair, sir – considering.' I saw his eyes dart to the porthole and away again as though he were scared by what he saw out there. ‘Will we be in Shelter Bay soon, sir?'

‘Two or three hours.' Stratton's voice was calm, matter-of-fact, ‘Bring coffee and sandwiches as soon as we get in. I'll be getting hungry by then.'

‘Very good, sir.' And the boy fled, comforted, but glad to leave the bridge with its view of the wildness of the elements.

The squall turned to sleet and then to hail, but the hail sounded no louder than the spray which spattered the walls of the wheelhouse with a noise like bullets. And then suddenly the squall was gone and it was lighter. The radar screen was no longer fuzzed. It still had a speckled look caused by the break of the waves, but right at the top a solid splodge of light came and went as the sweep light recorded the first emerging outline of Laerg.

It was about half an hour later that the helmsman relayed a report from the lookout on the open bridge immediately over the wheelhouse. ‘Land fine on the starb'd bow, sir.'

‘Tell him to give the bearing.'

The helmsman repeated the order into the voice pipe close above his head. ‘Bearing Green o-five or it may be o-ten. He says there's too much movement for him to get it more accurate than that.'

Stratton glanced at the radar screen, then reached for his duffel coat and went out by the port door, leaving it open to fill the wheelhouse with violent blasts of cold air and a whirling haze of spray. He was back within the minute. ‘Laerg all right – bearing o-three as far as I can tell. There's a lot of movement up there and it's blowing like hell.'

But at least visual contact had been established. I leaned against the chart table, watching as he entered it in the log, hoping to God that Shelter Bay would give us the protection we needed. It was now only two hours' steaming away. But even as my nerves were relaxing to the sense of imminent relief from this constant battering, the helmsman announced, ‘Lookout reports something about weather coming through on the radio.'

Stratton glanced up quickly, but I didn't need the surprise on his face to tell me that there was something very odd about this. I had had a talk with one of the radio operators before I'd turned in and had discovered something of the set-up. There were two radio operators on board working round the clock in 12-hour watches. Their main contact was the Coastal Command net – either Rosyth or Londonderry. When not working the CCN, they kept their set tuned to 2182 kcs., which is the International Distress frequency, and any calls on this frequency were relayed through a repeater loudspeaker to the upper bridge. ‘Something about trawlers,' the helmsman reported. I think Stratton and I both had the same thought, that we were picking up a deep-sea trawler. Trawlers and some other small ships use 2182 kcs. on Voice. ‘Lookout says he couldn't get all of it. There's too much noise up there.'

‘Ask him whether it's a Mayday call.'

‘No, sir. Definitely not Mayday. And he was calling us.'

Stratton knew better than to disturb his radio operator in the middle of receiving a message. We waited whilst the ship pounded and lurched and the outline of Laerg took clearer and more definite shape on the radar screen. At last the operator came in. ‘Special weather report for you.' He steadied himself and then placed a pencilled message on the chart table. It was from Cliff Morgan. The message read:
GM3CMX to L8610. Advise weather conditions may deteriorate during night. Trawlers SE of Iceland report wind easterly now, force 9. At 0530 it was westerly their area. Suspect local disturbance. If interpretation correct could reach your area early hours tomorrow morning. This communication is unofficial. Good luck, Morgan
.

And God help you he might have added. A local disturbance on top of this lot.… Stratton was staring down at the message, cracking the knuckles of his right hand. ‘How the hell can he have contacted trawlers south-east of Iceland?'

‘Morgan's a “ham” operator,' Sparks said.

‘Oh yes, of course. You've mentioned him before.' He straightened up. ‘Get on to Coastal Command. Check it with them.' He had to shout to make himself heard above the thunder of a breaking sea. The ship lurched, sprawling us against the chart table. There was a noise like a load of bricks coming aboard and then the roar of a cataract as water poured into the tank deck. ‘A local disturbance. What the hell does he think this is?' Stratton glanced at his watch and then at the radar. The nearest point of Laerg was just touching the 10-mile circle. ‘Two hours to go.' And after that he didn't say anything.

Cliff Morgan's latest contact with the trawlers had been made at 15.37 hours. He took the information straight to Colonel Standing with the suggestion that L8610 be ordered to return to the shelter of the Hebrides until the weather pattern became clearer. This Standing refused to do. He had a landing craft in difficulties and an injured man to consider. Two factors were uppermost in his mind. The Navy tug, now in The Minch and headed for the Sound of Harris, had been forced to reduce speed. A message on his desk stated that it would be another twenty-four hours at least before she reached Laerg. The other factor was the position of our own ship L8610. We were in H/F radio contact with the Movements Office at Base at two-hourly intervals and the 3 o'clock report had given our position as just over 20 miles from Laerg.

Cliff says he tried to get Standing to pass on the information. ‘I warned the bloody man,' was the way he put it later. ‘I warned him that if he didn't pass it on he'd be responsible if anything happened.' But Standing was undoubtedly feeling the weight of his responsibility for what had already happened. His attitude, rightly or wrongly, was that unofficial contacts such as this would only confuse Stratton. In fact, he was probably quite determined to do nothing to discourage L8610 from reaching Laerg. ‘I told him,' Cliff said. ‘You are taking a terrible responsibility upon yourself. You are concealing vital information from a man who has every right to it.' The fact is that Cliff lost his temper. He walked out of Standing's office and went straight to Major Braddock. My brother took the same line as Standing, though his reasons for doing so were entirely different. He wanted L8610 available in Shelter Bay to evacuate personnel. At least, that is my interpretation based on his subsequent actions. He was determined to get the Army out of the island before the whole operation ground to a halt for lack of ships.

Having failed with both Standing and Braddock, Cliff decided to send the message himself. His broadcasting installation had an output of 200 watts, giving him a range of VH/F Voice of anything up to 1,000 miles according to conditions. As a result his message was picked up by another trawler, the
Viking Fisher
, then about 60 miles due south of Iceland. Her first contact with him, reporting a drop of 2 millibars in the barometric pressure in that locality, was made at 17.16.

Meantime, the Meteorological Office had begun to appreciate that the pattern developing in northern waters of the British Isles was becoming complicated by local troughs. The shipping forecast at 17.58 hours, however, did not reflect this. The gale warnings were all for northerly winds and the phrase ‘polar air stream' was used for the first time.

‘So much for Morgan's forecast,' Stratton said, returning the clip of forecasts to their hook above the chart table. ‘Maybe there'll be something about it on the midnight forecast. But a polar air stream …' He shook his head. ‘If I'd known that at one-forty, I'd have turned back. Still, that means northerlies – we'll be all right when we reach Laerg.' And he leaned his elbows on the chart table, his eyes fixed on the radar screen as though willing the blur of light that represented Laerg to hasten its slow, reluctant progress to the central dot.

As daylight began to fade a rim of orange colour appeared low down along the western horizon, a lurid glow that emphasised the grey darkness of the clouds scurrying low overhead. I thought I caught a glimpse of Laerg then, a fleeting impression of black piles of rock thrust up out of the sea; then it was gone, the orange light that had momentarily revealed its silhouette snuffed out like a candle flame. Dusk descended on us, a creeping gloom that gradually hid the violence of that cold, tempestuous sea. And after that we had only the radar to guide us.

At 18.57 we passed close south of Fladday, the isolated island to the east of Laerg. The two stacs of Hoe and Rudha showed up clear on the radar screen. Ahead and slightly to the starboard was the whole mass of Laerg itself. For the next quarter of an hour the sea was very bad, the waves broken and confused, the crests topping on to our starboard bow and the tank deck swilling water. The dim light from our masthead showed it cascading over the sides, torrents of water that continued to pour in almost without a break. The whole for'ard part of the ship seemed half submerged. And then, as we came under the lee of Malesgair, the eastern headland of Laerg, it became quieter, the wave crests smaller – still white beyond the steel sides, but not breaking inboard any more. The pumps sucked the tank deck dry and suddenly one could stand without clinging on to the chart table.

We had arrived. We were coming into Shelter Bay, and ahead of us were lights – the camp, the floodlights on the landing beach, and Four-four-Double-o lying there like a stranded whale. Low cloud hung like a blanket over Tarsaval and all the island heights, but below the cloud the bulk of Laerg showed dimly as a darker, more solid mass.

The home of my forebears, and to see it first at night, in a gale, coming in from the sea after a bad crossing … I thought that this was how it should be, and I stood there, gazing out of the porthole, fixing it in my mind, a picture that somehow I must get on to canvas – a grim, frightening, beautiful picture. In that howling night, with the wind coming down off Tarsaval and flattening the sea in sizzling, spray-torn patches, I felt strangely at peace. All my life, it seemed, had been leading up to this moment.