Douglas Reeman
Rendezvous — South Atlantic
To the armed merchant cruisers Rawalpindi, Jervis Bay, Laurentic, Dunvegan Castle and to all those other proud ships which sailed in peace but went to war when they were most needed
Epigraph
I am the tomb of one shipwrecked; but sail thou: for even while we perished, the other ships sailed on across the sea.
1
Scapa
The camouflaged Humber staff car ground to a halt, its front bumper within feet of the jetty’s edge, and stood vibrating noisily as if eager to be off again.
The small Wren driver, muffled to the ears against the intense cold, made to switch off the windscreen wipers, saying, ‘Well, here you are, sir. There’ll be a boat across at any minute.’
She turned slightly as the car’s only passenger said, ‘Don’t switch them off. Not yet.’
Oblivious to her curious stare, Commander Andrew Lindsay leaned forward to peer through the rain-slashed glass, his face outwardly devoid of expression.
Grey. Everything was grey. The misty outline of the islands, the sky, and the varied shapes of the ships as they tugged at their cables in the wind and rain. The waters of the great natural anchorage of Scapa Flow were the deeper colour of lead, the only life being that of swirling tide-race and the turbulent undertow.
Scapa: That one word was enough. To thousands of sailors in two world wars it spoke volumes. ‘Damp and cold. Raging gales and seas so fierce as to need every ounce of skill to fight clear of rocks and surrounding islets.
As his eyes moved slowly across the anchored ships he wondered what his new command would be like. You could never tell, in spite of your orders, your searching through manuals and intelligence reports. Even at the naval headquarters in Kirkwall they had been unhelpful.
H.M.S. Benbecula, an armed merchant cruiser, had been fitting out for six months, and now lay awaiting her new captain. On the stormy crossing by way of the Pentland Firth from the Scottish mainland he had seen about a dozen young seamen watching him, their inexperienced eyes filled with what curiosity, hope or, like himself, resignation? One thing was certain, they had all been as green as grass. In more ways than one, for within minutes of casting off most of them had been violently seasick.
And this was only September. The second September of the war.
The Wren driver studied his profile and wondered. Her passenger was about thirty-three or four. When she had picked him up by the H.Q. building she had seen him staring moodily at the glistening street and had sensed a sudden throb of interest. And that was unusual in Scapa. The Wrens were vastly outnumbered by the male services, and it had become hard to raise much excitement over one more newcomer. Yet there was something different about this one, she decided. He had fair hair, longer than usual for a regular officer, and his blue eyes were level and extremely grave. As if he were grappling with some constant problem. Trying to come to a decision. As he was at the moment as he stared over this hateful view. He had that latent touchof recklessness about him which was appealing to her, but at the same time seemed withdrawn. Even lost.
He said quietly, ‘You can switch them off now. Thank you.’
Lindsay settled down in the seat, pulling his greatcoat collar about his ears. Grey and cold. Greedy and impatient to test him again.
He knew the girl was watching him and wondered idly what she was like under all those shapeless clothes and scarves. In her twenties probably, like most of the Wrens he had seen in the warm rooms of the H.Q. building. He smiled grimly. In her twenties. He had entered the navy as a twelve-year-old cadet in 1920. Twenty-one years ago.
All that time without a break. Working and studying. Travelling and learning his trade. His smile vanished. Just for this. Command of some clapped-out merchant ship, which because of a few guns and a naval crew was classed as a warship. An armed merchant cruiser. Even the title sounded crazy.
‘I think I can see a motor boat coming, sir.’
He started. Caught off guard. All at once he felt the returning anxiety and uncertainty. If only he was going back to sea in a destroyer again. Any destroyer would do, even one like the old Vengeur. But he must stop thinking like that. Vengeur was gone. Lying on the sea-bed in mid-Atlantic.
He saw the distant shape of the motor boat, her blurred outline scurrying’above the white moustache of her bow wave. Soon now.
Warily he let his mind return to his last command, like a man touching a newly healed wound. He had been given her just two days after the outbreak of war. She had been old, a veteran V & W class destroyer built in the First World War, and yet he had come to love and respect her quaint ways and whims.
As the first nervous thrusts by friend and foe alike gave way to swift savagery, Lindsay, like most of his contemporaries, had had to start learning all over again. Theories on tactics, became myths overnight. The firm belief that nothing could break the Navy’s control of the seas was stretched to and beyond the limit of even the most optimistic. Around them the world went mad. Dunkirk, the collapse of Norway and the Low Countries, the French surrender with the subsequent loss of their fleet’s support, piled one burden upon another. In the Navy the nearness of disaster and loss was more personal. Right here, within sighting distance of this quivering car, the battleship Royal Oak had been sunk at anchor by a U-boat. The defences were supposed to be impregnable. That was what they always said.
And just six months ago, while he had been in hospital, the battle-cruiser Hood had been destroyed by the mighty German Bismarck. The Navy had been stunned. It was not just because a powerful unit had been sunk. In war you had to accept losses. But the Hood had been different. She had been more than just a ship. She had been a symbol. Huge, beautiful and arrogant, she had cruised the world between the wars, showed the flag in dozens of foreign ports, lain at anchor at reviews ablaze in coloured lights and bedecked with bunting to the delight of old and young alike. To the public at large she was the Royal Navy. Unreachable, a sure shield. Everything.
In a blizzard, just one shell had been enough to blast her to oblivion. From the hundreds of men who served her, only three had been found alive.
Perhaps his own Vengeur had been closer to reality, he thought vaguely. Old but well-tried and strongly built. She had served her company well, even at the last.
He could remember the moment exactly. As if it were yesterday. Or now.
His had been the senior ship of the escort to a westbound convoy for the United States. Twenty ships, desperately needed to bring back the stores and needs of a nation alone and at war.
Two merchantmen had been torpedoed and sunk in the first three days, but after that it seemed as if the Atlantic was going to favour them. A great gale had got up, and for day after day the battered convoy had driven steadily westward, with Vengeur always hurrying up and down the straggling lines of ships, urging and pleading, threatening and encouraging. The rest of the escort had consisted of two converted trawlers and a patrol vessel which had been laid down in 1915.
It was all that the greatest navy in the world had to spare, so they had made the best of it.
Perhaps the invisible U-boats ran deep to avoid the storm and so lost the convoy, or maybe they went searching for easier targets. They would have had little difficulty.
But one U-boat commander had been more persistent and had managed to keep up with the ragged lines of merchantmen. He must have been trying for the most valuable ship in the convoy, a big, modern tanker which with luck would bring back enough fuel to carry the bombers across Germany and show them what it was like.