“Hold the rifle for me, PO.”
He grabbed the rope and heaved himself up on deck, over the rail and then leant back for the rifle.
“PO, you and two up here.”
There was an exterior companionway leading up to the bridge; Simon ran up, rifle at the ready, jumped inside.
He saw an officer and three seamen, sat down on deck and looking sheepish at being discovered. They put their hands up.
“Who are you?”
“Deutsch.”
“German?”
“Ja.”
He gestured with the rifle.
“Up!”
They stood.
“You speak English.”
They shook their heads. The officer pointed below, made a dumbshow of calling a man up.
“Yes.”
The officer leant to a voicepipe and called something incomprehensible.
A minute and feet clattered on an internal companionway and a young man, a junior officer appeared.
“I speak English, sir.”
“Thank Christ for that. Who and what are you?”
“Henke Paulus, sir, cargo from Kiel, naval charter. We are ordered to enter Zeebrugge, which is in German hands, but it is not. We enter harbour, we are shot at and make speed out again. A small cannon from the big mole shot and hit and made damage. We travel twenty kilometres, more by a little, and the rudder breaks. Then the screw will turn no more for the rudder hitting it. Then we float three hours and see you. We hide because we think there will be our ships soon.”
“Good. Tell all of your crew to come on deck. Place yourselves on the forward deck. You are prisoners. You will not be hurt.”
Simon showed himself on the bridge wing and began the laborious process of semaphore, wigwagging his arms in exaggerated motions.
‘Sheldrake close ship. Speech.’
The signal was acknowledged and the destroyer came within twenty yards.
“She’s German, sir. Needs a tow. Full of warlike stores, sir. Sent to Zeebrugge which was supposed to be captured already.”
He went on to explain the details he had been given.
Captain Smallwood yelled back.
“Robin will tow you to Dunkirk. Remainder of the section will provide cover against these German ships.”
“Aye aye, sir. Suggest additional seamen, sir.”
The cutter rowed across with another four men armed with revolvers, handier in confined spaces aboard ship.
Robin manoeuvred close to the cargo ship’s bows and floated a grass line across, light and easy to handle but not especially strong. PO Carter hooked up the line and passed it aboard where the seamen carefully heaved it in, pulling across a heavier, stronger line, itself attached to the thick towing cable. They faced then the normal problem of finding a strong point in the bows to fix the cable.
“Use the anchor chain, sir. Act as a spring, if the wind gets up, sir… Ready, sir.”
Simon stood in the bows and bellowed to Robin to take up the slack and commence the tow.
Two knots while they satisfied themselves that all was well and that merchant seamen had not relied upon a faulty anchor chain. Then Simon waved and suggested five knots; he could not give orders to Robin’s captain.
An inspection of the stern and the visible remnants of the rudder suggested that they could do nothing towards restoring the ship’s own power. The shell had hit just above the waterline and had smashed the steering gear and almost certainly damaged the screw.
“Looks as if two or three shells hit, Carter.”
“One of them pompoms, sir. Don’t do much to armour plate but carves a hole in a merchant hull.”
Destroyers had effectively no armour, were too small and light to carry the weight.
“Gives you to think, don’t it, Carter.”
“Yes, sir.”
Carter’s flat response made it clear he thought about very little.
“Organise a hot meal for the men, and the German prisoners, Carter.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Carter was far happier with that command – he could do things far more easily than think about them.
No wind; no enemy – the tow was without incident until they were picked up by a pair of harbour tugs at Dunkirk. The little paddle-steamers made a quick job of taking the cable and nudging the German ship alongside a wharf. Simon then had the job of contacting the shore authorities and explaining who and what they were. In the absence of radio aboard destroyers, they had no knowledge of the ship.
The Captain of the Port listened and then showed blank; he did not expect to receive captured German vessels.
“Should have taken her to Harwich. Your home port.”
“Weather forecast suggested strong winds from the north, sir. Too great a risk to tow her across the North Sea with only a single destroyer, sir.”
Weather forecasts were commonly wrong but could not be ignored.
“Accepted. She had to come here. What the hell do I do with her?”
“She might have a useful cargo, sir. Big ship. Might be valuable. The Admiralty might have a use for her.”
“Hah! Good argument, boy! Take an inventory and pass the word to Their Lordships.”
“I took her papers, sir. Here.”
“Well done. I can’t read them… Bound to be someone here who can. I’ll deal with that. Best thing for you is to get aboard your destroyer and return to your own ship. Did you say you were First Lieutenant of Sheldrake?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can’t be twenty.”
“Just, sir.”
“That uniform’s not so old… How long have you been a lieutenant?”
“Six months, sir. Destroyers push young men hard, sir.”
“Where were you before?”
“St Vincent, sir. Two years as a mid.”
“Good ship. Bit different to a destroyer!”
“Yes, sir. Surprised me at first. Came to like it, sir.”
“Well, you’ve done a good job here, young man. Off you go, now.”
Robin’s captain was waiting for orders, in case the authorities in Dunkirk refused to accept the merchantman and told her to take the ship elsewhere.
“Port Captain fancies telling the Admiralty he has a captured ship with maybe a hundred thousand pounds worth of stores, sir.”
“Well done, thou good and faithful servant! We do the work, he gets the glory. Thus it ever was in the Navy. Get your head down, Sturton. You look knackered!”
“Bit tired, sir. No sleep for the wicked!”
“You’re too young to be wicked! Off you go.”
Hector McDuff was exhausted.
The South Atlantic winter had turned to a vicious, tumultuous spring, gales alternating with near-hurricanes without cease for two months. Good Hope had pitched and rolled and continued to patrol, returning to port only for the cruel labour of coaling in a harbour with no bunkering facilities other than mounds of coal and shovels.
Good Hope used her own derricks to swing the coal aboard from the coaling hulk - an ancient ship said to have been one of Brunel’s original vessels and one of the first ocean-going steamers - being taller than the occasional merchant ship that used the facilities and the harbour cranes. Part of the crew boarded the hulk and shovelled coal into sixteen thousand of the one hundred and forty pound sacks and lifted them into cargo nets by hand. The steam derricks swung the nets up on deck and the hands there carried them in small trucks to the coaling chutes and lifted the sacks and emptied them before running back to drop the sacks into the nets and pick up the next load. Down in the bunkers, unventilated and almost without light, the stokers shovelled the coal to the sides away from the chutes, levelling the mounds so that they would not shift at sea. The job was done at the run, without let up, so that the ship could get back to sea as quickly as possible – the patrol had to be maintained as nearly unbroken as possible.