Alan Evans - Thunder at Dawn

Aitkyne said, “They’re shooting very well.”

“Yes, they are.” And they were alive to his tactics of evasion and trying to anticipate him.

He ordered no change of course. The Coxswain on the wheel waited for it, ready for it, shifted restlessly when it did not come.

Corporal Hill, muttering under his breath, expecting it, found instead that his target was in sight for all of ten seconds and the 9.2 got off a round.

The next salvo plunged into the sea a quarter-mile away and Aitkyne yelled, “Fooled ’em!” And seconds later: “Hit her!”

Smith had seen it, too. He lowered his glasses. “Hard aport!” And to Aitkyne and Wakely and the others, all of them agrin, “Not a hit.” The water-spout had been right on the bow of the leading cruiser but there had been no flash or smoke of impact. A very near miss. “But good shooting.” A little encouragement would be good for all of them.

The sun was almost down, slipping below the horizon. The coast was close now but not close enough. Ariadne was a deal closer and her lead being cut every second; Thunder was making all of her top speed of nineteen knots so Chief Davies had proved his claim albeit under duress. Smith estimated Ariadne would not enter neutral waters for at least fifteen minutes and more. Before that they would be up with her and the cruisers might well allot her a share of their fire. At the moment they were concentrating on Thunder , their prime target. He had another decision to make, and soon.

The sea was moderating and the ship was making better speed. Down in the belly of the ship where that speed was created was a scene from hell where the black gang in the stokehold, stripped near-naked and oily with sweat that formed a glue with the coal dust, laboured like souls in torment to feed the roaring insatiable red maw of the furnaces. The life of the ship and the lives of all in her rested in the hands and strength of those men on the rack of continual physical exertion. There was no glory, only back-breaking labour in a killing temperature and the knowledge that at any moment a shell might rip into Thunder and turn the illusion of hell into reality.

There were places in the ship where that awareness was even more acute: in the magazines. Benks the steward worked in the magazine below the forward 9.2, his job to load the charge into the gun-loading cage beside the projectile fat with death, to be whisked up the hoist to the turret above. It was not heavy work and anyway, so far he had done nothing; the fore-turret had not fired. But it was claustrophobic. He sweated coldly.

He had waited, strung taut inside for the inevitable hit. When it came right above him the shock tore at those taut nerves. He had heard stories, only too many. Invincible was a battle-cruiser, twice the size of Thunder , but at Jutland she had taken a shell amidships, in the magazine there, and she broke in half and sank like a stone. The middle was blasted out of her. Where the magazine was. Just obliterated. Nothing left of anything, anybody.

He lifted his face, turning it up to heaven and the sky but he saw only the thick steel above his head that sealed him in. He prayed.

Thunder twisted her old frame at thrashing full speed, swerving, heavily jinking, like some lumbering old nanny puffily playing tag with her charges. But effectively. Barely effectively. The cruisers astern had her range and were firing’ well, very well indeed. Time and again only the change of course hauled Thunder clear of a falling salvo, sometimes seeming to pull in her skirts as the towers of water rose right alongside or astern. At times she seemed to steam through a forest of tall trees, dark green in the trunk and blossoming dirty grey, through a fog of spray. So that Ballard in Ariadne cursed and held his breath, to whoosh! it out and curse again as she came through trailing her black plume of smoke.

She bore a charmed life; or maybe she had a wizard on the bridge. On the bridge they thought so as they braced against the heel and turn, tensed not only to ride that but for the orders that Smith gave curtly, absorbed. They lived from second to second and he gave them each second and they knew it. They were naked on the bridge.

He had to make his decision. The luck was running out as the range closed. Knight said, “They’re firing their secondary armament, sir.”

“Yes.”

The fire had intensified. Now added to the four 8.2s that each cruiser fired were the two 5.9s that would bear forward in this stern chase. Thunder could reply only with the after 9.2, her elderly six-inch being still out of range. Just. But soon …

The coast was close but so was Ariadne , very close, with a hundred and thirty souls aboard her. Sunset was upon them, the darkness rushing in over the sea. Smith watched and gave his orders. They had to give Ariadne a little more time, or let her take her chance, which would be miserable because she was a huge and fragile target. And Thunder’s chances? Throughout the ship they would be mentally hunched against the continual salvoes they braved and could do nothing about. Chafing. Wanting to hit back, make a fight of it. That would be a madness, an invitation to disaster. But now …

Smith snapped, “Hard astarboard!” and Thunder’s bow swung and this time kept on swinging until, when he ordered, “Midships!” she ran at a right angle to her previous course and that of the pursuit. The turrets were already drumming as they trained round. And the sun was down. Smith took a breath. Now then. “ Broadsides !”

Thunder still charged along at her maximum nineteen knots but she was running straight. She still belched smoke from the labour of the gasping, sweating stokers but now it rolled away to port on the wind and at last the layers and trainers could see. The sun was down, no longer sending shafts of blinding light directly into their eyes, but leaving instead just a red afterglow against which the pursuing cruisers stood out stark, clear black silhouettes, beautiful targets for gunners and the rangefinder.

She left one more salvo plummeting into her wake as the guns rose and fell like a blind man’s questing fingers but Thunder was no longer blind. The long barrels steadied and an instant later the salvo bells rang and the broadside crashed out in tongues of flame and jetting smoke. Thunder heeled to it, recovered as the guns had already recoiled. The ammunition numbers in turrets and casemates shoved forward with projectiles as the breeches clanged open, the fumes swirled and the gun-loading cages rattled empty down the hoists. Shells were rammed, charges inserted, breeches closed, trainers and layers spun madly at their wheels then slowly as the sights came on. The layers’ fingers went to the triggers.

Thunder fired again, heeled again.

Wakely said, “They’re turning, sir, turning broadside.”

Smith nodded. The cruisers were matching his manoeuvre to return broadside for broadside. It was what he expected and Garrick in the fore-top would be expecting it. The cruisers could fire twelve 8.2s and six 5.9s to Thunder’s two 9.2s and two six-inch, because the main-deck guns could not be fired in this sea even if they had been manned. The cruisers had an overwhelming advantage in firepower, but they were no longer closing the range. That was what he wanted.

He let the glasses hang, resting his eyes, and thrust his hands into his pockets. Oddly, while the engines hammered and the broadsides thundered out, while somewhere above him only seconds away the cruisers’ monstrous salvoes fell towards him, he could relax. For just this breathing space he had no orders to give. Now it was up to the gunnery jack, Garrick, and the long chain of men that stretched down from him in the fore-top to the layers with their fingers on the triggers. He had given them a target they could see and a stable platform.