The Lion at Sea (11 page)

The surgeon was working in the wardroom and sick berth attendants were stacking amputated limbs near the captain’s cabin. With the wounded all aboard, they lowered boats to pick up German survivors. There were two or three hundred of them, wearing lifebelts and lifting their hands, shouting for help and trying to sing
‘Deutschland über Alles’
from their rafts. Their thin cries came over the lifting sea through the mist in a curious ullulating sound like the calling of seals as
Cressy
searched the wreckage-strewn water. Picking them up made Kelly feel vaguely as he once had when out shooting in Ireland when he’d brought down a couple of startled thrushes with a left and right in his excitement. The German survivors and the bodies floating in the water gave him the same feeling that some dreadful mistake had been made.

There were so many of them and so little room, some of their wounded had to be put in the gunroom under the Dartmouth cadets’ hammocks and, during the night, Boyle, the boy who’d joined ship at the same time as Kelly, appeared pale-faced outside his cabin to say one of them was calling out in pain. He was a young German officer, a military observer, who’d lost a hand. The pad over the stump had slipped but the sick berth attendant Kelly summoned rearranged it, and the young German nodded his gratitude to Kelly. He was a good-looking youngster with a little spiked moustache like the Kaiser’s still standing up despite his soaking. His eyes were defiant and proud, though, and Kelly offered him a cigarette, aware that another emotion had gone by the board. He reminded Kelly of his brother Gerald and it was quite impossible to hate him.

As they turned and lumbered back to Sheerness, Poade stared at the grey sea. ‘Always a bridesmaid, never a blushing bride,’ he said.

‘With the speed of this squadron,’ Kelly growled, ‘we couldn’t catch a ship’s boat pulled by a snotty-nosed boy. If we’re going to wage war with ships like these, it’ll be God help us.’

The popular press went overboard about the battle. ‘We’ve been to Heligoland and back,’ the
Daily
Express
crowed with glee. ‘Please God we’ll go again.’

‘No great feat really, of course,’ Poade allowed casually. ‘But it was carried out under the Germans’ noses and
that
establishes our ascendancy. Once we can get their High Seas Fleet into the North Sea, they’ll be wiped off the face of the earth.’

Within forty-eight hours they were back on their patrol, the Dartmouth boys still queasy from the smell of blood left behind by the wounded Germans, and, almost immediately, Poade’s enthusiasm was diminished by the news that a U-boat had shocked the Grand Fleet by penetrating the Firth of Forth as far as the railway bridge.

‘At this moment, I suspect,’ Kelly grinned, ‘there’ll be battleships and battle cruisers dashing in every direction for the safety of Scapa Flow.’

Four days later they heard that another U-Boat had torpedoed the flotilla leader,
Pathfinder,
in the Channel, and Poade’s gloom increased.

‘These submarines are becoming a bit of a bloody nuisance,’ he decided heavily.

Only Kelly seemed to lack surprise. He knew his father and had met many of his contemporaries, and he suspected that the setbacks they’d suffered so far could well be laid at their door.

The Broad Fourteens patrol continued in increasingly bad weather. It was a curiously remote kind of life. Apart from the days in harbour, they were entirely out of touch with the world, keeping lonely company in the southern North Sea. The blazing excitement of action that they’d all anticipated, which had been encouraged by the sinking of
Königin
Luise
in the first hours of war, had simply not materialised and the war had begun not with the almighty smash they’d all been expecting but with a mere shift of scenery. They’d expected to thunder into battle with smoke pouring from the funnels and the guns blazing in some dramatic action filled with the roar of high explosive and the smell of burnt cordite, but, instead, all they’d done was sink a few German trawlers in the Channel which, unaware that the war had even started, had cheered them as they’d approached. As they’d taken the crews on board, the only difference had seemed to be that they’d had fresh fish to eat for a change, and now all they’d got were humdrum patrols without anything positive to show for them. It was hard even to feel useful.

Towards the middle of the month the equinoctial weather became bad enough to lash the hundred-and-twenty mile stretch of water from Dover to the Hook of Holland to a fury and stir its grey waves to a cauldron of stinging spray and opaque spindrift.

‘In for a spell of bad weather,’ Poade observed. ‘Admiralty’s radioed that the Dogger Bank patrol needn’t be continued and that the seas are too bad for the destroyers, so that we’ve got to watch the Broad Fourteens on our own.’

‘Oh, bloody marvellous!’ Kelly glared out at the grey murk, uneasy, uncertain and angry. It was obvious to anyone with eyes to see that the submarine had advanced long since from infancy to pugnacious adulthood and to leave the old cruisers unescorted seemed to be a mistake of the highest order. ‘That leaves us without any protection at all and, on this beat, with the Dutch coast on one side and a minefield on the other, there’s no room for any variations of course. The Germans must know exactly where we are at any time.’

Spray lashed across the deck and his eyes narrowed as he peered into the mist.
Cressy
was lurching through the waves, massive, ponderous and threatening, but they’d all heard the nickname they’d been given and he guessed that their threat was an empty one. The squadron was even under strength because
Euryalus
was in dock, and the flagship was running out of fuel and would soon have to turn for shore.

‘What happened to Winston’s idea that the Broad Fourteens could be abandoned?’ he said to Poade. ‘Are they using us to entice the Germans out so that Tyrwhitt can get at ’em, or are we here just because we’ve
always
had ships here?’

Poade shrugged. ‘I expect our elders and betters know more than we do,’ he said. ‘Though I’ve been told that Roger Keyes was heard on the telephone saying “For God’s sake, take these bloody
Bacchantes
away.” We’ll be all right,’ he ended. ‘In these waters, submarines’ll be at a disadvantage and, if the weather moderates, one of Tyrwhitt’s flotillas will join us tomorrow morning.’

The following morning, however, the weather was still bad and the message they received announced that Tyrwhitt’s flotilla had had to turn back to Harwich. ‘The flagship’s returning to base as well,’ Poade said. ‘For coaling. Drummond in
Aboukir
’s
in command.’

The wind was coming in fierce short gusts now, plucking the funnel smoke downwards across the bridge to make them cough and dab at streaming eyes, and the sky was high without a scrap of warmth to it, its empty greyness turning the water into an angry pewter that seemed to reflect the tall dark sides of the old cruisers. Square, ungainly, their high freeboard blunt and blank as cliffs, they dug into the short steep seas like angry bulls butting at a gate. There was a hard chill in the air and Kelly was in no mood to be forgiving.

‘Why doesn’t
Aboukir
signal increased revolutions?’ he demanded. ‘At this speed we’re a sitting target.’

‘Conserving coal,’ Poade said. ‘Admiralty order.’

‘It’s asking for trouble. Pity we can’t just zig-zag a bit. I always found it a damn’ sight harder to hit a rabbit when it jinked.’

Staring at the chart, Kelly wasn’t as convinced as Poade that the situation was a safe one. As the three old ships steamed in line ahead, the eastern horizon was still dark with the gale blowing into their faces. The Chief Yeoman appeared and, as he handed a signal form to Johnson, Kelly noticed that his fingers were stained blue by the duplicator he used to issue the captain’s orders.

‘Germans are out again, Johnson announced bluntly. ‘Light cruisers, destroyers and submarines.’

Under the narrow, old-fashioned cap, his face was keen, but there was an element of strain and worry, too, behind his eyes which indicated that he was as aware of danger as Kelly was.

‘They’ve been seen from Esbjerg, South Denmark, heading north. Jellicoe’s coming out, too, heading south past Flamborough Head towards the Horn Reef. It doesn’t involve us.’

‘It still leaves us isolated, sir,’ Kelly pointed out.

‘I doubt if we need to worry in this weather.’

Late in the evening, another signal was received, saying that Tyrwhitt had started off again for the Broad Fourteens with his flotilla of destroyers and should arrive the next day. At first light the following morning, the
Bacchantes
were still heading northwards, anxious eyes on the western horizon for the first sign of the destroyers’ grey shapes to appear through the mist. As the middle watch ended, Kelly was staring round him, frowning. The waves looked black, racing in towards the ship like dark mountains of water, and he felt a tingle in his guts as he watched the sullen crests rolling past, exhilarated by the angry sea yet at the same time depressed by the absence of colour and the deep sense of foreboding in his mind.

Poade was also clearly uneasy. ‘Seas are dropping,’ he said. ‘And that’s no help. It’s to be hoped Tyrwhitt arrives before the submarines start getting awkward.’ He glanced at the chart. ‘I’d have thought we’d be safer to head towards the destroyers instead of continuing on this course.’

Kelly peered through the mist across the broken seas towards
Aboukir.
The old ships one behind the other reminded him for all the world of three elderly circus elephants performing a routine march.

‘What’s the course, Pilot?’ Johnson demanded.

‘Oh-four-five, sir,’ Poade said.

‘Speed?’

‘Ten knots.’

‘How far are we from the Hook of Holland?’

‘Twenty miles on the beam, sir.’

‘We’ll have to change soon or we’ll run aground at Ijmuiden.’

The sky was the colour of old lead, darkening in the north to the colour of wet Cornish slate. Every time the ship pitched, the screws raced out of the water and there was a shuddering groan as the whole vast structure creaked and gave to the strain. There was a curiously depressing feel in the damp, salty air, and oddly there seemed no sensation of surprise as Kelly saw a fountain of water rise from the port side of
Aboukir
leading the line. It seemed somehow to fit in with the prevailing mood of the day.

He had just turned away to glance at the chart when, through the murk, he saw the column of water and spray lift in a sudden mushrooming shape, a grey-white tower soaring high above the decks, almost as high as the funnel, thick, sullen and ominous; then he saw smoke coiling upwards, and with surprise, saw the cruiser appear to lift into the air with it. There seemed to be no flame and no explosion and it was a moment or two before he realised that
Aboukir
had been hit by something. Then
Cressy
shuddered as a vast shock wave punched at her massive hull and, immediately, men crowded the decks to stare across the dark uneasy water.

‘
Aboukir
’s
struck a mine, sir!’

The roar of the explosion came across the misty sea as he spoke and, as the smoke cleared, through the murk they noticed
Aboukir
had stopped and Kelly was surprised to see she was already heeling so far over to port her starboard plates were visible, glistening wet and red in the increasing morning light. The iron-grey water alongside her, churned to foam by the explosion, was dotted with black heads, and more men were appearing from below until her decks were teaming with running sailors.

‘I think they’re abandoning, sir!’

Johnson snatched at his telescope. ‘Already?’

Some of
Aboukir
’s
boats, smashed by the explosion, swung in shattered wreckage from the davits. One of them had been lowered and stopped half-way down, and it hung lopsided and awkward-looking. A light began to flicker from the stricken ship’s bridge.

‘She’s signalling, sir. It
is
a mine and they want us to come closer to pick up survivors.’

‘She’s going, by God!’ Johnson said in surprise. ‘Stop engines! Get the boats away! Maguire, go with them! You’ve got a sound head on your shoulders! It’s got to be done quickly. Paymaster, we’ll need blankets, soup and hot coffee, and warn the surgeons to be ready! And double the look-outs!
Aboukir
might be wrong. It might have been a torpedo.’

As the way went off
Cressy
a bugle blared. The alarm gongs were sounding through the ship and she came alive with men running along the broad decks to the boats. Bosuns’ mates urged the men along, their pipes twittering as they ran.

‘Away first and second whalers!’

The boats swung clear over the black water and the oarsmen and coxswains fell into the narrow wooden hulls. The second whaler was already dropping down the ship’s side, the falls screaming as if they were alive. Kelly clambered into the pinnace. ‘Lower away!’ he shouted.

The waves shot up towards them, the wind snatching at their crests.

‘’Vast lowering! Out pins! Let go!’

The boat dropped with a lurch on to the crest of a wave and, as it began to veer away from the black bulk of
Cressy
’s beam, Kelly saw that
Aboukir
was now down by the bow, the watery sun shining on the white figures of naked sailors walking inch by inch down her sides as she heeled over, some of them standing, others sitting down and sliding into the water which was already thickly dotted with the heads of swimming men and the sprawled white shapes of the already dead.

Every one of
Cressy
’s boats had been lowered and mess tables, stools, spit kids, chests of drawers and chairs were being hurled overboard for
Aboukir
’s
survivors to cling to. The main derricks, prepared in record time, were hoisting out boom boats and Kelly was just heading away from the ship’s side when there was another terrific crash.
Hogue
, cautiously approaching like
Cressy
to pick up the swimming men, also seemed to lift out of the water, and the shock jarred Kelly even through the timbers of the pinnace. A second or two later there was another crash, deeper sounding and heavier, and a great column of water and a cloud of smoke lifted from
Hogue
’s
side. The third of her four huge funnels collapsed at once like a pack of cards and, as she began to heel over, she appeared to have been cut almost in two.