The Lion at Sea (40 page)

‘What the devil are they up to?’ Talbot demanded.

Arbuthnot’s ships were being hit repeatedly and as the leading one heeled to a salvo just abaft the rear turret, a red sheet of flame leapt up. She recovered, righted herself and steamed on, only to be hit by yet another salvo, this time in front of the foremost funnel. At once she seemed to glow red all over, swell and burst into fragments in an enormous cloud of black smoke which rose to a height of several hundred feet then, dispersing, showed no sign of a ship at all. Below them on the deck the sailors began to cheer wildly and Kelly swung round.

‘Shut those men up, Heap!’ he snapped. ‘That’s not a Hun! I saw the white ensign. It was
Defence.
That’s
Warrior
astern of her and
she
’s being hard hit, too!’

As they watched, the German fire switched to another British ship which hauled out of line behind the battered and burning
Warrior
.

‘It’s
Warspite
. What the hell’s she up to?’

The battleship was making a half turn, with the whole of the leading enemy division concentrating on her. Naylor, the sub, was just directing a camera at her when Talbot saw him.

‘Put that damn thing away,’ he roared. ‘She’s going to be destroyed!’

Warspite
had reached a position about eight thousand yards from the Germans when she slowly turned again, lashing out viciously with her fifteen-inch guns, before rejoining the British line. As she regained safety there was a sudden lull around them and they had to reduce speed and turn in a complete circle to avoid bunching up on the onrushing battleships, one of which thundered past their stern, towering over them, the men on her bridge peering down on them. Over the din of the sea and the guns they could hear bugles blowing somewhere aboard her.

‘Swop you this ’un for that ’un, mate,’ a wag on the forward gun screamed above the roar of water.

Despite the British losses, it was clear that the Germans were at last in real trouble. Endlessly the Grand Fleet stretched away to the horizon, with Hood’s Third Battle Squadron, led by
Invincible,
further to the north. The German line lay in a shallow convex arc to the south.
Lion
had turned west-south-west now, to rejoin the line and lead her consorts in the van of the Grand Fleet. They seemed blurred by the mist and the Third Battle Cruiser Squadron, manoeuvring to join them, was barely visible. But the battle cruisers, for the first time able to see the German ships better than they were being seen themselves, were scoring hits now.

Talbot glanced round. It was already evening and the sky was growing darker, the visibility in the low cloud poorer now than it had been all day. Bright points of fire from the ghostly ships stabbed the gloom.

‘The bloody sun will be gone soon,’ he said. ‘What there ever was of it. The Germans are going to get away.’

As he spoke the veil of mist in front split like the curtains of a stage. Clear and sharp, they saw Hood’s battle cruisers silhouetted against the horizon and, as they watched, an explosion on
Invincible
’s
centre turret lifted a great crimson flame to the sky. At the very top ship’s plates were turning and tumbling, then the deep red faded and the pall of smoke merged into the smother and, as a shower of fine ash and debris began to drift down, they saw the two ends of the ship standing perpendicularly above the water.

‘They said Jellicoe could lose the war in an afternoon.’ Talbot’s voice was harsh. ‘It looks to me as though
this
is
the afternoon.’

The light was fading rapidly as the destroyers pounded round to reach the battleships. There were only a few survivors clinging to the floating wreckage of Hood’s ship; they were still cheering as the battle fleet bore down towards the Germans, then they were swept under by the vast steel hulls.

Kelly tore his eyes away. In the distance an unholy firefight was taking place and the German ships were being heavily hit.
Mordant
was rolling appreciably and he realised that the whole of the immediate area of the sea was heaving up and down in a confused swell created by the wash of two hundred-odd ships all moving on different courses at high speed. The German battle line was struggling to turn away, hit constantly by the British dreadnoughts, and one of them was already on fire, her whole fore part ablaze.

The visibility grew worse until they could see only the flash of salvoes, and Talbot glared into the growing darkness.

‘If we’re landed with a night action,’ he said, ‘it’ll be a proper Donnybrook Fair. Every night exercise I was ever on was pandemonium.’

The din seemed to be part of some heavenly battle, yet above it they could hear the thin sound of cheering across the darkening water as the great ships continued to thunder past them. Talbot was staring towards the German line, his expression tense, then he brought his fist down on the bridge rail.

‘They’re turning away!’ he said. ‘By God, they are! They’re running!’

Red flashes and smoke ahead of
Mordant
indicated a separate conflict between destroyers and cruisers moving at the speed of an express train, but by the time they reached the spot it had all cleared except for a three-funnel cruiser, lying inert between the lines, the target for every British battleship which could not see her own target. The cruiser
Southampton
tore in to give the German ship the coup de grâce but other Germans lying beyond the cripple opened a rapid fire on her and she turned tail and fled, zigzagging like a snipe.

Twilight was coming down on them now and the visibility was further spoiled by the low-lying clouds of smoke and cordite fumes which hung like a gloomy shadow over the sea. The British ships had worked to the eastward of the Germans by this time and were trying to edge into a semi-circle with the enemy in the middle. Then a few German destroyers crept out from the head of their line and began to make smoke. As the dense screen of oily black rolled along the surface of the water, they could see only the topmasts of the German capital ships.

‘They’re changing course, sir,’ Kelly said, glancing into the dimly-lit binnacle.

‘Sir!’ Lipscomb appeared. ‘Message from the flagship. “Where is enemy’s battle fleet?”
Southampton
’s replying
“Have lost sight.”’

‘Then, for God’s sake, make a signal, Number One! Tell ’em we can see ’em. We’re not here just to get involved in a life and death struggle with German torpedo boats. Give ’em their course and our position.’

But, as Kelly moved away and they raced along outside the smoke, four German destroyers emerged right across their bows. As
Mordant
jinked to starboard, the forward gun banged and there was a sharp glow and a flare of flame on the leading German, then all four Germans opened fire at once and
Mordant
was swamped in splashes that flooded the deck as they fell across her. There was a tremendous crash as a shell hit the forward gun and the whole ship seemed to stagger in its stride. Splinters slashed the bridge and funnel and hundreds more, blasted into razor-sharp slivers of red-hot steel, were flung into the W/T office to smash equipment and cut aerials. Then another salvo fell round them and the wireless office itself dissolved in a sheet of flame, and sparks flew upwards in a golden rain as if someone had taken a flying kick at a bonfire.

For a second Kelly seemed to be surrounded by a terrible noise and there was an agonising pressure on his eardrums and a searing pain over his right eye. A bright ball of fire exploded only a few feet away from his face like a blue-green flare, with a yellow-white centre like phosphorous. Vaguely through the glare, he saw a man about to jump over the side, but he disappeared in the flash of the burst, and as the smoke blew clear he saw his lower torso and legs had vanished and the shoulders and chest were just turning slowly in the air before splashing into the sea. A panicking man running along the deck disappeared into a gaping hole where fire was roaring and his screams came through the rumble of the flames until abruptly they died.

Picking himself up, Kelly found that blood was filling his right eye and he couldn’t see, and his nostrils were full of the stink of fumes. The burned and tattered body of a wireless operator lay sprawled among the wreckage. A second wireless operator was just dragging himself to his feet.

There was no point in asking if repairs could be made. There was nothing to make repairs with, and he brushed the blood from his eyes and stumbled towards the bridge. The ship was still moving through the water, smoke and steam escaping from her both midships and aft.

Vaguely, his eyes still dazzled by the icy-yellow glare of the shell-burst, he saw Rumbelo standing by the bottom of the ladder, with blood on his face.

‘You all right?’ he mumbled.

‘I think, so, sir.’ Rumbelo’s voice came only faintly to his bruised eardrums. ‘I was just dead lucky. I think everybody else’s gone.’

The bridge was a shambles. What was left of it was splashed with blood and for a moment Kelly stood dazedly among the debris, waiting for someone to give him orders. Then it dawned on him through the shock of the explosion that had deafened and half-blinded him that the helmsman and Talbot were lying together in a heap, their bodies leaking blood. Beyond them, Heap was sprawled near the compass, and there was no sign of his head.

The binnacle was pitted with holes but the wheel seemed to be intact, and Kelly stared dully round him, still shocked but slowly recovering his senses. At last the completeness of the disaster struck him and he shook his head and forced himself to concentrate.

There was
no one
to give him orders, no one at all. It was he who was captain of the ship.

It was dark as
Mordant
wallowed helplessly through the water but they could still hear heavy firing to the south-west where the horizon was lit by flickering lights as the German line was harassed by the light cruisers and forced further and further away from its bases into the North Sea. The thudding of guns seemed to be felt in every one of
Mordant
’s
plates, as the flash, the display of searchlights, the glare of explosions and the blazing torches of burning destroyers marked the Germans’ retreat.

Kelly jerked to life at last. Iron claws seemed to be tearing at his forehead.

‘Rumbelo,’ he yelled. ‘Up here! Do you know the silhoutettes of the German navy?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Stand by the wheel then until we can get a relief quatermaster. Keep your eyes skinned.’

They were still moving ahead as Rumbelo swung their bows into the smoke, and thankfully, choking on the heavy fumes, they felt the relief as the shooting stopped. Then they were out at the other side into comparative peace and Kelly shouted down the voice pipe to reduce the revolutions.

The relief quartermaster appeared.

‘Take the wheel,’ Kelly snapped. ‘Rumbelo, get Mr Naylor up here and ask Mr Hatchard to let us have a report on damage and casualties.’

As Rumbelo vanished, he stared around him. Below on the deck, a man covered with blood stood with his feet apart, swaying slightly, his head hanging, his eyes wild like a calf in a slaughterhouse. Kelly sighed. The big smash that the lower deck had been praying for, for two years, had certainly arrived. With his own eyes he’d seen four proud ships die, as
well as several smaller ones, both British and German. Blood had been shed and lives had been ended, including that of Talbot who had spent two weary, boring years staring at Scapa Flow, only to have everything blotted out for him in the first hours of the battle he’d waited for, like so many hundreds more dead men, over so many months. It was to be hoped that now the big ships had arrived, they would make all the slaughter of their smaller sisters worth while.

Naylor arrived, panting, white-faced and shaken, and Kelly lifted one hand to acknowledge him. ‘Better act as my eyes, Sub,’ he said. ‘I can’t see very well at the moment.’

‘Shall I get the SBA, sir?’

‘No, for God’s sake, stay where you are. Let’s stay at reduced speed until we know what we’re doing. Make it “slow ahead” until we hear what the engine room’s got to say.’

As they waited for Hatchard’s report, the bodies of the dead were laid out on the port side near the wreckage of the after gun. The atmosphere seemed to stink from the heavy coal smoke from the big ships’ funnels and the cordite and lyddite from the explosions.

‘Where do you think the fleet’s got to, Sub?’ Kelly asked.

Naylor tried to look intelligent and knowledgeable. ‘South-east by the look of it, sir.’

Kelly bent over the bridge rail, clinging to it grimly in his pain with one hand and holding to his eye with the other the towel he normally wore round his neck against the spray. He didn’t bother to reply. He had merely been making conversation, trying to reassure Naylor. The wounded had crawled into the lee of the funnels in a pitiful attempt to find shelter, and they were now having to drag themselves back again as other men pushed forward with collision mats to cover the shellholes. Kelly struggled to lift his head, but he could hardly see.

‘Where’s the ensign?’ he asked.

‘Shot away, sir.’

‘Hoist another, Sub. Got to look our best for the party.’

A flotilla of destroyers hurtled past in the growing gloom, dark shapes in the shadows, their funnel tops crowned with a vivid red glow so that a scarlet canopy seemed to hang over each vessel.

‘No signalling,’ Kelly rapped. ‘Let’s see who they are first.’

As the ships flashed past, the last one fired a solitary four-inch shell at
Mordant,
which whistled harmlessly overhead.

‘Some bloody gunlayer who was dozing and happened to wake up as they passed,’ Rumbelo growled.

Hatchard appeared with Wellbeloved. ‘Fifteen casualties,’ he reported. ‘Forward gun wrecked with most of its crew dead. Wireless office wrecked. Voice-pipes and electrical communications cut and steam pipes burst. There’s also a fuel pipe fire but it’s under control.’