J. E. MacDonnell - 139 Read online

  J E MacDonnell - 139 - Death Of A Destroyer

  INTRODUCTION

  (of an old friend)

  Lieutenant-Commander "Buster" Crewe, an executive officer in a cruiser, mentor to Sub-Lieutenant Sainsbury, on seamanship and some other requirements of successful command at sea:"It's no bloody good my saying, `That ship there. Article 19. She's on our starb'd hand. We have to give way.' Let's paint the picture. "She's crossing from starb'd to port... but you know the Rules. She's about 15,000 tons. Takes a hell of a lot of stopping. In a destroyer once, fog. Didn't see the bastard. Caught us twenty feet back from the starb'd bow. Ripped the nose almost clean off. Think of that, young `un! What watertight doors you'd close, where the collision mat is, what watch is on deck, who your petty-officers are. Practice assuming she's going to collide. Do you go astern or do you swing her to port? How much? Where is the Old Man? Keep always in mind your turning circle and how long it'll take to stop her at the speed she's doing. Remember - if there is a balls-up, you've got to think of all those things at once. There'll be no time for sliderule calculations. All right? "And don't forget the siren. Signal him your intentions. Now - assume that ship is about to hit... "Hmmm. Not bad. But you took three times too long. And you forgot the siren. There could be other ships astern of you. They want to know what the hell's going on. They're not mind readers. Now there's a fire in the engineer's workshop. You don't know where that is, do you? Find out as soon as you go off watch. Remember, the first thing some bright boy will do is phone the bridge, and he'll expect you to take over from then on. It'll be very helpful if you don't know where to send the fire party. Everything unusual happens - who do they think of first? Officer of the watch. You're the boy, remember that. There may not be time to run yelling for the Old Man or Commander. And no time to send for the ship's plans and specifications. Every watch I'll give you three compartments. You'll hop down and find `em. Don't be afraid to ask an able-seaman. He'll think more, not less, of your commonsense. He'll talk of that pitiful slob Sainsbury in his mess, but he and his messmates will know that the pitiful slob Sainsbury is on the ball, or at least trying to get there. All right? "Sailors, now. You've got to understand `em. Forget about this discipline business. They'll do what they're told, sure they will. But there's a hell of a lot more to it than that. One day you'll get your command, and you'll know what I mean. An officer, especially in wartime, has the privilege of holding their lives in his hands. They want to know that those hands deserve the privilege. They're a good bunch, matloes, don't you forget it. You'll find that they'll try and put something over you. But there's a reason. They want to know - if only subconsciously - your calibre. They respect a man who's awake up to them. But way and above all else they respect good seamanship. Gunnery's important, of course, and torpedoes and asdic, but seamanship comes first, last and in-between. A gunnery officer's not worth a frankfurt if he can land a salvo on a target but can't handle the ship or lower a seaboat in a rough sea. And believe me, the matloes know it! "You're an officer. If they stop to think, they'd concede that you can't be expected to tie a Turk's head or a wall-knot as well or as quickly as a captain of the top, who's doing that sort of thing all day. Okay. But they don't stop to think. You're an officer, you get higher pay, you live in the wardroom on what to them is superlative food. And you can order them around. Therefore you pay for those privileges - and they expect you to be better than they are, in everything. And by God they're right! "I'm talking, you understand, about an officer fitting himself for command of two hundred or six hundred men. Not a slob who'll still be wearing two and a half rings when he's thrown on to the beach after thirty years' service. It's easy to say: `I'm an officer, I've more important things to learn and do than try and better a sailor at his job. I'll tell him what to do, and there are leading-hands and pettyofficers paid to see that he does it.' In a way that's all right. But not if you're to have a happy and efficient command. Especially if that command's a destroyer, which it will be before you graduate to bigger -but not necessarily better - things. And it's so easy to get their confidence. Your brain and your training is superior to theirs. I don't mean you have to chip bloody rust better than they can, or paint the funnel. But in the important things - pulling an oar in a rough sea, lowering the seaboat on top of a wave, not jolting it down into the trough and breaking a leg or two, tying vital knots and hitches - it's so easy to gain proficiency. "Listen to this. It happened in this cruiser, and with this Commander. The Black Wolf they call him, and heknows it - and loves it. Remember, it's a pretty sorry commander who doesn't get a nickname from the troops. And they call our bloke the Black Wolf because, in the first place, he's dark, and in the second place he knows what sailors are up to before they do it. They curse him, and they'd go through hell for him. That's what I call leadership, Sainsbury. All right? "Let's make sure you know. It happened about six months ago. We were on evolutions, and for the purpose of the drill a heavy fog-buoy had to be hoisted inboard on the quarterdeck. The bosun's party had rigged sheer-legs - nothing so simple as using a derrick. The buoy had been hauled up close under the counter, and a rope passed over the towing wire. That rope had to be secured, not through the sheave of the block on the sheer-legs, but to one of the spars itself. It was a sort of preventer rope to ensure that the buoy didn't drop back and its wire foul the screws. Got it? Now there would be considerable weight on that rope if the buoy slipped, and it had to be knotted securely. And quickly, for this was an evolution, remember, and there were three other ships battling to hoist their own evolution-completed pendant first. "It was amusing to watch - fifty men on the quarterdeck should have been able to tie that knot, but the commander and the bosun were there, watching, and so volunteers were conspicuous by their absence. Seconds passed, and no one moved. The Black Wolf could have ordered a man up there. But what did he do? He shoved his telescope into the hands of an ordinary-seaman and leaped up on the guard-rails. In a few seconds that preventer rope was secured with as pretty and taut a rolling hitch as ever you saw. Fifty matloes saw it. Then the cunning old bugger ordered `Heave in' and the buoy came up sweet as a whistle. You see?" Young Sainsbury had seen. His eyes had gleamed as he viewed the scene Crewe had re-created. "It would seem to me," he had suggested tentatively, "that a commander needs to be a bit of an actor."

  Chapter One

  Much water had washed by Lieutenant- Commander Bruce Thornton Sainsbury's bridges since that lesson, and of course not even his agile mind could remember every word of Buster Crewe's crisp advice. But now, as the work boat took him across the bright blue waters of Port Moresby harbour, he was thinking about it.

  Idly, he wondered why. Certainly Spindrift up ahead was not his first command - and that had been corvette Seamew, ripped open by a torpedo in the Atlantic on the third day after he'd assumed command - but every one of her 150 men were unknown to him, so far as he knew. Maybe that was the subconscious reason for his nostalgic recall of Crewe's words, for old Buster had been pretty strong on the importance of getting to know your sailors. Sainsbury hoped - for he was a somewhat superstitious man, inclined to heed his hunches that he was not headed for trouble with Spindrift's crew. But then, logic helped him, why should he be? He had heard nothing derogatory about her, while such important things as a ship with a crew of misfits tended to get themselves talked about.

  He cleared his mind of preconceived notions and studied his new command.

  Covertly, the work boat's bowman studied him.

  A work boat is a vessel attached to a port's headquarters ashore; it operates as its name implies, running all sorts of errands like delivering mail and messages to units to a fleet or flotilla, and even new commanding-officers. But the bowman of this one rated two good-cond
uct badges, which meant at least eight years in, and the face of their passenger fascinated him. In his time he had come across all sorts of captains: tall, short and middling, most of them fit-looking and some of them pudgy; but all of them owning the same type of face - hard, weathered, and looking like captains. But this bloke...

  Prim, was the bowman's best word for it. Not mealy-faced, not that exactly... But looking, damn it all, more like a parson; maybe a senior bank clerk, or a school master the bowman remembered, from his State school way, way down, and way back, in Ballarat. Looking nothing at all like a destroyer driver. That mouth, pursed in concentration like that... He had it, by God: like his aged Aunt Myrtle, knitting her interminable balaclavas and socks for the boys overseas!

  The bowman smiled a little to himself. He might have grinned if he'd known how close his diagnosis; that the nickname of Spindrift's new captain actually was Aunty.

  Lieutenant-Commander Sainsbury had noted the bowman's covert interest in him, as he noted most things happening about him, but he was used to it, and from long practice ignored it. His interest was for his ship. Long and lean she was, like all destroyers: but not aged, thank God, judging by the streamlined face of the bridge, and the gunnery director jutting above it. Four guns: though he could not be sure of their exact calibre, for she was the first of her Intrepid-class he had come across. But only five torpedo tubes? Yes, his squinted eyes told him, he could be sure of that: one bank of five tubes. Ah well, five tin fish could fix a battleship, he smiled thinly to himself, while at the same time he smiled at the speciousness of the thought; God forbid that he should find himself in the position of being able to find out his new ship's anti-battleship qualifications!

  Then the boat's cox'n was ringing down for slow ahead and she bumped gently against the destroyer's gangway.

  "Thank you, Cox'n," said the passenger - primarily, noted the bowman - and jumped nimbly enough on to the platform and climbed the gangway's steps.

  But Sainsbury was uncaring of his voice or mode of debarkation; he was waiting for something, and if it did not come then the omission would tell him a great deal about his new berth, all of it worrying. Then, piercingly clear, the piping shrilled out above his head, that welcome reserved for a ship's commanding-officer, and one of his worries was laid to rest.

  He stepped on to the quarterdeck, with a surprisingly smart salute - but then his other science, apart from seamanship, was gunnery. The corners of his vision saw, without specifically noticing, the quartermaster and bosun's mate of the piping party, drawn up at right-angles to the ship's side, and the officer of the day directly in front of him, but his sight went directly and deliberately to the officer standing beside the OOD; for this man would be his deputy, responsible for the general efficiency or otherwise of the ship, and thus, greatly, for the captain's peace of mind.

  My God, he thought, but though he was yet to win his V.C. and command a cruiser, his self-control had been long enough practised to have him maintaining nothing more than expected interest in his face and the normal crisp courtesy in his voice:

  "Good morning. Number One, I presume? My name is Sainsbury."

  "Welcome aboard, sir. I'm Caswell, Gordon Caswell." Having saluted, Caswell took the captain's proffered hand. "This is Lieutenant Binder, sir, navigating officer."

  "Pilot." Sainsbury shook hands with an officer of average height, average pleasantness of face, but rather more than normally keen of eye. But then, for a navigating officer, that was average too.

  "I'll have your gear brought inboard, sir," Pilot said.

  "Thank you." Sainsbury, instead of moving forward to his cabin, turned aft for the quarterdeck. Caswell had to follow him, as if he'd received a shouted order. So did several dozen pairs of eyes. Primly -sorry about that word, but there is none better - Sainsbury paced along the quarterdeck, aft along the starboard side, forward along the port side, and then back again right to the stern; and as he went his feet, and sometimes his hands, went out to test the lashings of the scores of depth charges awaiting there, while his eyes ran over the depth-charge throwers, and finally the rails right on the stern, filled with their quiet grey canisters of amatol, for though he was gunnery, his forte was anti-submarine warfare; loathing the underwater snakes. And at the end of his extempore inspection, vividly and wholly verbatim, his words to Crewe surfaced in his mind: It would seem to me that a commander needs to be a bit of an actor...

  "Sir?" said Caswell quickly.

  "Yes, Number One, what is it?"

  "Nothing... But you... seemed to be smiling at something."

  "Just a memory, Number One." He waved his hand. "The quarterdeck seems taut enough."

  "Thank you, sir. But then..." Caswell smiled a bit diffidently. "Well, it's my special province, sort of. I have a pet hate, you see."

  "Oh?" Sainsbury's mind was suddenly rolling with suspicion; but at once he realised that neither he nor Caswell had heard of each other, so how could the lieutenant be aware of his feelings in the matter? "You mean submarines?" he said softly.

  "I hate the bastards," Caswell said with quiet and vehement savagery.

  "Well now," Sainsbury said after a moment, "it seems you and I might get on together."

  "I'm sure we will."

  This in itself was somewhat of an odd remark for a first lieutenant to offer his just-met captain, yet there was something else, the tone of it, that had Sainsbury glancing sharply at him. He saw the hardness still in Caswell's face, yet the gleam of humour in his eyes.

  "You see, sir," Caswell answered his look, "you noticed, but you didn't comment. That makes our first meeting just about unique. I get awfully tired of it... the witty remarks... Witty. My God!"

  Sainsbury smiled; that is to say, his purse-string mouth stretched a trifle. "I imagine it could become somewhat irritating. However, now we're on the subject you might as well let me have the vital statistics and then we can forget it."

  "Six feet four," Caswell obliged, "weight eleven stone. I have, believe it or not, a nickname."

  "It wouldn't be, by any chance, Splinter?"

  "Spot on, sir."

  Sainsbury offered that smile again, but Caswell would never know that it had its origin in Crewe's contention: It's a pretty sorry commander who doesn't get a nickname from the troops.

  "I'll see my cabin now, Number One," Sainsbury said, while he was thinking that this might turn out a happy berth, pierhead jump and all.

  They went forward along the iron-deck together; Sainsbury moving, with his short steps, his head up and eyes looking down his pinched nose, like a man walking down a steep and invisible hill - as a colleague had once rather unkindly said of him.

  "That is all, thank you," he said in his cabin. "I should like to meet the rest of the officers in the wardroom in an hour."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  Caswell withdrew and shut the door. He'd been gone only a minute when a knock sounded on it. The trip up by plane had been uncomfortable; Sainsbury was in his underpants, and about to shower.

  He stifled the jolt of irritation and called:

  "Who is it?"

  "Chief bosun's mate, sir."

  Now he felt more than a jolt. The Buffer was the first lieutenant's man, there should be no reason for him to approach his captain like this, apart from an emergency, and patently that was not the case. Sainsbury turned his back to the door, pulled on his shorts and growled: "Come in."

  He heard the door open, and started at once. "I do not know what previous routine you have been used to, Chief Bosun's Mate, but from now on you will approach me only through the first lieutenant. Is that clear?"

  "Clear, sir. Sorry. Maybe I should have given the password first."

  This was incredible. Sainsbury started to turn. "What!"

  "Skeleton Park, sir,"

  "What the devil..." Sainsbury started, and then - maybe it was because he had been thinking of Buster Crewe, with his mind back in that cruiser - whatever the reason, he knew who his visitor was even befor
e he turned fully and saw his grinning face. "Good... Lord," he said softly, "You!"

  "In the flesh, sir," answered Hooky Walker; though at this time he had yet to be fitted with that steel hook in lieu of his right hand; this was reserved for the violent future, with the venue thousands of miles from here, in a French harbour.

  Sainsbury forgot about properly buttoning his shorts. "Come in, man, come in!" He shook Hooky's hand; in fact, so far forgetting his captainly dignity as to take that leg-of-mutton fist in both of his own somewhat more delicate hands. "This is... splendid, old chap."

  He meant that, by the Lord. To meet Hooky Walker again at any time, but to have him as his chief bosun's mate, in a ship he was new to! The crew of Spindrift might know nothing of his seamanship, but by all the bends and hitches in the Book he now knew the condition of theirs.

  They were staring at each other, affection and pleasure lighting their faces - like a damn pair of moonstruck lovers, Sainsbury suddenly realised. He coughed, breaking the spell. "I had no idea you were here."

  "I did. You, I mean. Been waiting ever since yesterday, when I saw your name on the signal. Thought we might have to sail before you could make it."