Curtis took his cap off and riffled his hair vigorously. The pencil he had been using started to dance in the rack with the vibration and I remembered we were still at emergency revs, which would have old McKenzie, the Chief, calculating out his increased fuel consumption like a miserly investor who’d just found the interest rate going down two points. The extroverted Lieutenant Commander Braid must have been on the same train of thought because Breedie stuck his head in through the starboard door. ‘Mallard’s signalling, Sir.’
Curtis crammed his cap back on and tumbled out on to the bridge, while I followed at a slightly more dignified Chief Officers’ pace. The sun was really burning down by now and the steel helmets had vanished from the corvette’s bridge, to be replaced by white cap covers.
Breedie handed me the signal. COMESCORT TO MASTER CYCLOPS: REPEAT TO MASTER ATHENIAN… REDUCE SPEED TO SEVENTEEN KNOTS… ADMIRALTY ADVISE TWO REPEAT TWO U-BOATS IN AREA IMMEDIATELY AHEAD… COURSE ALTERATION STARBOARD 5 DEGREES TO 148 DEG TRUE REPEAT 148 DEG ON EXECUTE SIGNED BRAID END.
I looked at Curtis. The Commandant Joffre had been hit on her port side, now we were altering further to starboard, away from the African coast. It wasn’t good news. Anyone who went down now was going to have an even longer row to safety and I wasn’t the Bligh type of adventure-sailor. On the other hand, if we had to deviate at all, I would personally have felt safer leaving an even bigger safety margin.
Curtis rested the Aldis on his forearm and flickered the acknowledgement as I lifted the voice pipe out of its clip in the wheelhouse. The Captain answered almost at once. ‘Signal from escort, Sir,’ I said. ‘Course alteration to starboard.’
There was a short silence, ‘I’ll be right up, John. Just carry on as requested.’
I hooked the voice pipe back up and pressed the engine room buzzer. When they lifted the receiver down below the background noise of the machinery seemed very loud. The voice at the other end rasped in my ear, ‘Chief Engineer.’
‘Kent, Chief. You can reduce to seven-five revolutions again.’
‘Aye? Thank Christ for that, Mate. The way yon fancy Navy man acts ye’d think we were a bloody oil tanker.’
I grinned into the mouthpiece. ‘Well, you can take your kettle off the boil anyway, just as soon as you like.’
The Chief must have run to his precious throttle controls because the vibration died down almost before I’d replaced the receiver. He was a real cost-conscious Company man was Henry McKenzie. Curtis appeared, framed in the wheelhouse door. ‘Mallard’s taken down the “Execute”, Mister Kent.’
I nodded at the helmsman. ‘Starboard five. Steady on 148.’
‘Steady on 148, Sir,’ he echoed, putting the wheel three spokes over, and I watched as the bow swung slowly round. As the mast stopped steady on the shimmering horizon again I walked over and glanced in the binnacle.
‘Steady on 148, Sir,’ the quartermaster affirmed as I looked at the floating card under the bright brass hood. I nodded.
‘Watch her at that. We haven’t a lot of seaway to play with between us and Athenian.’
I didn’t like the idea of our two ships sweeping along directly abeam of each other. Not at that speed. It only needed a few moments of carelessness by either helmsman, and magnetism or interaction could take over, drawing the two enormous steel hulls together. The theory was that it made us a slightly less spread-out target for any predatory submarine, although, at the speed we were travelling, he would even then have to take a snap shot at us from forward of the beam before we left him without a chance of catching up. It was a reassuring thought.
Then I remembered that the captain of the Commandant Joffre had probably felt as optimistic as I did. Just before his ship lay over on top of him.
Breedie was chalking the new heading on the course board over the helmsman’s head when Captain Evans arrived on the bridge. He glanced briefly at the figures, then jerked his head to me and stepped into the chart-room. I followed to find him stretched out over the table, tapping the chart thoughtfully with the dividers.
He looked up frowning, ‘Did Commander Braid give any reason for the course change, John?’
I nodded. ‘Admiralty intelligence seems to think there are U-boats directly ahead of us, Sir.’
He must have seen the doubtful look in my eyes because he raised his eyebrows queryingly. ‘But…?’
I shrugged. ‘The Navy must be one hell of a sure of their plotting to try and get us to skin past with less than a half point alteration. Maybe there is nothing to starboard apart from a few thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean, but I’d rather gamble on the possibility of a longer trip in a lifeboat to the West Africa coast than barely shave past an established danger area.’
Evans chewed his bottom lip and looked at the chart again. The thin pencil line marking our progress was creeping up to a point roughly abeam of Mocamedes, to the north of the Angolan border. ‘Any substantial alteration now will mean a lot of ground to make up by the time we reach the Cape.’
I knew what he meant. If we swung well away to our starboard hand at this stage it meant we had to make good the distance of two sides of a triangle against a straight run into our refuelling point at Cape Town. As it was, we were already running well to the west of the normal shipping lanes in order to avoid presenting the German Navy with an almost guaranteed rendezvous. Still — apart from the Chief Engineer’s penurious ulcers — I couldn’t see why we had to save miles at the expense of a proportionate increase in risk.
‘What’s a couple of days extra steaming going to matter, Sir?’ I queried.
The Captain dipped into my tin of Players and graciously offered me one too. I mentally resolved to carry them in my pocket from now on as we lit up and he blew a long, thoughtful streamer of smoke at the tiny blob on the chart marking St. Helena. I could see he had something on his mind so I stared out through the open door at Athenian taking long, graceful dips into the slow swell as she clung to the dubious protection of our flank. It was all a game of chance, even in the way we were hugging each other for solace. A split second decision by some waiting Kapitan Lieutnant on whether he could take us best from the port or starboard side would mean the difference between Athenian or Cyclops crewmen vomiting pink lung tissue in the wake of their luckier sister as the black diesel oil burnt its way down to their guts. I shuddered involuntarily. Sure, I loved Chief Officer Henderson over there like a brother, but…?
‘Have you ever wondered why we haven’t been zigzagging this trip?’ said Evans, watching me.
I looked guiltily away from Athenian, hoping he hadn’t been able to read my thoughts. ‘Sir? Well… I assume that, at seventeen knots, we’re presenting a pretty hard target anyway, without arsing about convoy-style.’
He smiled and knew what I meant. All our previous trips during wartime had been in convoy, where the slightest suspicion of submarine activity had been the signal for periodic alterations of course in an attempt to confuse any ambushing U-boat’s attack plan. We’d also seen a lot of ships erupting violently to prove that theory didn’t always match up with practice! It was a bloody nuisance for the officer of the watch too, with twenty or thirty ships charging about all over the shop like panic-stricken cattle. But then — so was fighting a drowning man for a place on a Carley float.
Evans shook his head, ‘Even vessels proceeding independently zig-zag almost continuously in submarine waters. And maybe, after the practice they’ve had, the Hun are getting better at hitting fast targets.’