Alan Evans - Ship of Force

Smith glanced around as someone climbed on to the bridge. It was Dunbar. Smith said, “Course is five — five degrees and that’s Nieuport coming abeam. We’re looking for a Harry Tate that crashed in the sea a couple of hours ago.”

Dunbar was silent a moment then said huskily, “Poor devils. It’ll be hell’s own job finding them on a night like this.” His head turned, eyes going over the ship.

Smith said dryly, “I haven’t bent her nor lost the wireless shack overboard.” Sparrow had not been designed for wireless so the equipment was housed in a shack erected between the first and second funnels.

Dunbar said stiffly, “Of course not, sir.” Wooden. Formal.

It irritated Smith. Dunbar wasn’t going to make excuses and he was being stiff-necked. Then Smith with his uncomfortable habit of self-criticism remembered somebody else who could take refuge in being stiff-necked and formal. He smiled wryly and said, “Sanders kept the log. All routine stuff, taking me aboard and so on. You’ll need to make it up.” The log seen by Trist would be completed by Dunbar and signed by him, showing him as being in command throughout.

“Aye, aye, sir.” Dunbar was silent a moment as he took it in, then: “Thank you, sir.”

Smith said nothing. That was the end of it so far as he was concerned but he knew it was not the end for Dunbar. The loss of his wife and child would haunt him for God only knew how long. Smith had not been hurt that way but he had been hurt. As a naval cadet he had been the odd man out, a solitary introspective small boy in a rough, extrovert society. He had been hurt physically and mentally but he had survived. Later there had been love affairs when he was a very young officer with only his pay, a ship and a career to fight his way through. No family, no home. Not a marriage prospect. Young women had hurt him then as the young always hurt each other. He was sorry for Dunbar but there was nothing that he could do.

There was silence on the crowded bridge, an edgy, taut-nerved silence. All of them peered into the night, searching for the airmen but with little hope. They were also looking for the enemy because Sparrow was in the Germans’ backyard now. In one way the Royal Navy’s command of the sea gave the Germans an advantage because they knew that any ship they met must be an enemy and so could shoot on sight while the Navy had to assume another ship was most likely friendly, and had to challenge. If Sparrow used her signal-lamp to challenge in these waters it was possible the only reply would be a shell screaming out of the night.

Smith said, “There’s a drifter, Judy , out on the Bank somewhere.”

He saw Dunbar nod and heard him answer, “I know her. That helps but there could be a score of us out here and still not find those airmen.”

Smith thought of the men out there, if they were still alive out there, and wished to God that he could use a light.

It was as if his prayer was answered. For ahead of them came a spark of light that immediately blossomed and grew into a ball of fire that lit up the underside of the clouded sky, the dark sea and the tar-black shape of the drifter on which the flare burned. It burned from the foremast and in its light and with his glasses Smith could see her little gun and the men shifting about her deck. She was moving slowly across Sparrow ’s course and a mile or so ahead.

Gow said, “God!”

Dunbar groaned, “Geordie Byers! Bloody fool!”

“Maybe he’s seen something,” ventured Sanders.

“And maybe somebody’ll see him!”

“Quiet!” Smith rapped it and lifted his voice. “Keep a sharp look-out!” They might as well make use of the light now it was burning.

And there came a yell from the starboard look-out: “Twenty on the starboard bow! Right on the edge o’ the light! There’s summat in the water and I thought I saw it move!”

Smith used his glasses. There was something. Wreckage? And a man? He saw the movement that might have been one more shadow from the flare but it was an arm, he was certain, and there was a head. It was lost as it sank into the greater darkness of a trough then seen again as it lifted on a wave. A shape square-cut that would be wreckage, a pale splash above it that was the face.

Smith lowered the glasses. “It’s a man. Skipper Byers must have seen him because the drifter’s turned towards him.”

The flare was burning low but it had served its purpose. Smith wished it was out, and swore softly. He could guess the cause of the skipper’s rashness. Geordie Byers must have found some flotsam from the RE8 and known that a man might be close by. Smith saw Dunbar’s head turning like his own, sharing his uneasiness. They were both aware that Sparrow made a prime target as she ran down on the drifter. The flare did not light Sparrow yet but to any craft or U-boat astern of her she would be silhouetted against its glare. A second was too long to be that kind of target. Geordie Byers and the other men aboard Judy had been lucky. But they would have to learn not to rely on luck if they were to survive in the Channel war.

Smith said, “We’ll have a word with Skipper Byers.”

Dunbar grunted acknowledgment, a hand to his head. Smith saw him wince.

The flare was dying, but still painfully bright…

The spurt of flame came fine on the port bow, beyond and to seaward of the drifter, a flash that burned itself on the eye and then was gone, but before that instant was past the shell burst on Judy and that flash was bigger, lighting her up again as they saw the wheelhouse blown away and breaking apart as it flew. Darkness closed in briefly and then flames flickered on the drifter.

Smith set the glasses to his eyes. “Full ahead, Mr Dunbar! Load!”

“Full ahead both!” The bosun’s mate yanked over the handles of the engine-room telegraphs and Dunbar ordered, “All guns load!”

Sanders repeated the order in a high yell, “ All guns load !”

The killick, the leading-seaman gunner on the twelve-pounder echoed “- load !” The breech was thrown open, the shell rammed and the charge in its case inserted.

Dunbar swore. “Bluidy wars !” He shouted at Sanders, “Any word of Jerry having destroyers at sea?”

“No, sir!”

“It could still be a destroyer. If it’s one o’ those big boats…”

Dunbar did not finish but Smith knew what he was thinking. If that shell had come from one of the big, new German destroyers with four-inch guns then God help Sparrow . The enemy would not have seen Sparrow beyond the lake of light cast by the drifter’s flare, the thirty-knotter being hidden in the outer darkness. So far. But Sparrow was racing down on that lake of light. A turn to starboard or port and she could run for her life. Nobody would ask her to take on one of those big, modern boats. It was ridiculous. But neither could she leave the drifter to her fate.

Another gun flash. A second between the flash and the flaming, thumping crash ! as the shell exploded in Judy , and hurled blazing timbers into the sky in a shower of sparks and set new fires burning and rolling down smoke across the sea. Aboard Sparrow they heard the popping of the drifter’s three-pounder. Judy was a wooden boat. She burned and in the light of her burning they could see the men working the gun.

Time of flight of the shell about one second, Smith thought, so range between one and two thousand yards and closing. About twenty seconds between rounds so only one gun firing. Why? It could be a destroyer bows-on to the drifter so that only the one gun on the foredeck would bear but he didn’t believe it. Why didn’t she turn to fire broadsides? But if it was a destroyer then Sparrow was roaring up to shove her head in the lion’s mouth and it wouldn’t come out again. Smith could lose half his flotilla right now. And he was commanding Sparrow , in the excitement he’d almost forgotten that. He gulped and somehow managed to drawl out. “Stand by to depth-charge.”