He was also aware of Leading Writer Pickerell’s heavy breathing by his elbow as he folded or prepared another paper for his captain’s attention. Pickerell was a good writer, usually overworked, and very conscious of his small confidences. He was more like a confidential clerk than a schoolmaster, which was what he had been just two years ago.
More feet on deck, and the coxswain’s harsh voice, muffled but easily recognisable. Good old Tommy Mangin. Hard as nails, quick with tongue and fists, but strangely popular with nearly everyone.
“That’s about it, sir.” Pickerell gathered up the signal log and some of the other files. “The dockyard manager will be coming to clear things with you about lunchtime.”
“Thank you.”
Drummond stood up and walked into his sleeping cabin. His quarters were almost as large as the whole wardroom. A sign of less democratic days. When a captain was expected to entertain, to be seen for what he was. He crossed to the mirror above his handbasin and studied himself critically. He would make the most of his quarters while he could. He always did in harbour. Once clear of the last marker buoy he would be on the bridge. Either in his chair by the screen, or snatching cat-naps in this tiny sea cabin abaft the wheelhouse. These old ships had all their officers’ accommodation right aft. Separated from the overcrowded forecastle not merely by rank but by the boiler- and engine-room bulkheads. On more than one occasion he had been marooned on the bridge by savage storms in the Atlantic, standing watch by watch with the luckless O.O.W. while the rest of the officers were battened down in their wardroom, unable to make the dash along the narrow iron deck for fear of being swept overboard.
He touched his face, feeling the lines around his eyes. Some of the strain had gone, he decided doubtfully. He had brown hair, which was unruly within minutes of combing it. Level eyes, dark brown, giving him an almost wistful appearance. He grimaced. He would be twenty-nine next month. He felt about eighty.
He thought of his new company. It would not take long for the personalities to emerge. The willing ones, the jolly-jacks, those who would stay cool in action. Those who would break. He wondered about his first lieutenant. Frank had been a regular, not that that meant much any more. The efficient survived. The careless soon bought it.
Most of the officers would be temporary ones when Warlock dipped her stem into open sea again. The gunnery officer, Lieutenant Giles Rankin, had been a car salesman, the sublieutenants were too young to have been anything before the war. The doctor was apparently a newcomer to any sort of ship, and had hardly qualified before entering the Navy. The navigating officer, Lieutenant Richard Wingate, was an unusual bird. He had joined the Navy as a boy, and had obtained his commission just prior to the outbreak of war. A scholarship boy, a very unusual achievement in times of peace. Young, cheerful and outwardly unruffled by almost everything, he was a godsend.
Like Bruce Gaibraith, the commissioned engineer. Although he wore only a single stripe on his usually grubby reefer, he was almost the oldest man aboard. They got on well together.
Another old-timer was Mr. Noakes, the gunner (T). He was the oldest man aboard. He had been retired and had been recalled when it was at last realised that Hitler had meant all that he had said. Noakes had joined the Navy as a boy in 1911, before even the Kaiser had been seen as a real enemy. But unlike the navigating officer he had worked his way up to warrant rank step by painful step. A bitter man. Usually so full of resentment against “young bloody amateurs” who had been promoted over his head that he could barely conceal it. It never seemed to occur to him that they might be more intelligent. But he ran his part of the ship like a piece of oiled machinery. And that was something.
Drummond tugged the comb through his hair and touched the blue and white ribbon on his left breast. An average wartime ship’s company. He grinned, the effort pushing the strain from his face, revealing him as the man underneath. Youthful, reckless, and with little to hope beyond tomorrow.
‘He heard the other door open and Pickerell leaving, speaking to someone.
Drummond walked through to the cabin and said abruptly, “You must be Sheridan?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry about being adrift. I’ll see it doesn’t happen again.”
Drummond gestured to a chair. “Good.”
He watched him as he sat down. He had the look of experience. Well balanced, but a man who gave little away. A lean, hawkish face. One which would interest women.
He said, “You were Number One in the Venture, I see.”
Sheridan had an easy voice. No accent. Difficult to place. “Yes, sir.”
He added briskly, “You were aboard during the Russian convoy affair.”
The reply was equally sharp. “And a lot of others, sir!”
Drummond relaxed slightly. That was Sheridan’s problem.
Venture had been part of the escort on one of those convoys to Russia. He had done two himself and needed little reminding. A living, tormenting hell of ice and blinding snow, screaming gales and cold which got right inside the marrow of every bone. And whenever there was a lull the long-range bombers came. Or the U-boats, or, like Venture’s convoy, there was the threat of the big German battleships sneaking out from Norwegian lairs to decimate overloaded merchant ships with their mighty armament.
That particular convoy had been beset with troubles after mustering near Iceland. The weather had been worse than usual, and the only escort carrier had had to return to harbour with half her flight deck stove in by tremendous seas.
One battleship had been sent as covering force, just in case. She had been the Conqueror, a familiar sight in peacetime at reviews and on world cruises. Built just after the Great War, she had been something of an oddity, and had never fired her eight fifteen-inch guns in anger.
In wartime, signals sometimes got confused, like the men who made or received them. It was reported that a German battleship, escorted by the Navy’s old enemy, the battlecruiser Scharnhorst, and powerful destroyers were out of their fjords in Norway and already dashing to attack the slow-moving convoy. The order to scatter had been given, although it was now being said that the man on the spot should have waited a bit longer. It was easy to say that from a safe fireside or a barracks wardroom.
The convoy scattered to the winds, the escort spread its thin resources and then followed suit. Only the Conqueror remained. Without air cover, and too slow to escape as the German warship loomed through a snow squall, its great guns already homed on to the elderly British ship by radar,which Conqueror’s builders had not even dreamed about. It was not even a battle. It was a massacre. Of the Conqueror’s thirteen hundred officers and men, three were recovered by a terrified neutral Swedish freighter, the only witness.
The convoy survived, or most of it, but the escorting destroyers bore the brunt of Conqueror’s fate like a personal disgrace.
Sheridan said harshly, “I still think about it.”
Drummond walked to a scuttle and watched a Wren riding a bicycle along the side of the dock. Most of the seamen nearby stopped work to admire her.
He said, “Conqueror’s fate was decided long before she crossed swords with that German battleship.” He was thinking aloud. “Built in peacetime, with little thought for real protection. One shell through those thinly armoured decks and … ” He turned and added quietly, “Well, that’s what happened.”
Sheridan was watching him, as if gauging the right moment.
“I suppose it’s why I’ve not been offered a command, sir?” He could not hide the bitterness any longer. “My ship was there, as were a good many others. Does it mean we’re all branded?”