Alan Evans - Ship of Force

Smith took it. “Did he say anything new?”

Sanders shook his head wearily. “No, sir. He babbled a lot but his speech got more and more slurred. There was very little I could make out and that was stuff we’d heard before. He was never really conscious again.”

Smith put the notebook in his pocket and stood in silence looking out at the tendrils of mist that wisped across the cold sea in the pre-dawn light. Then he said, “I’m sorry.” He was. The man was an enemy but the enemy had been a man. And Smith had killed him.

They came up with the rest of the bombarding force as that first grey light spread across the sea from the French coast. Sparrow , with the West Deep and the shoal water of the Smal Bank astern of her was about to turn on to a northerly course that would take her out to the Cliffe d’Islande Bank. Dunkerque was seven miles off the port bow, just seen from Sparrow ’s bridge as a jumble of roof-tops with the finger of the Belfroi tower pointing at the sky.

To starboard steamed the Dunkerque Squadron, already heading out to sea on a northerly course for the rendezvous before the bombardment. The drifters were leading the way and sweeping a channel free of mines for the rest of the Squadron. There were British minefields to starboard of the drifters and off Sparrow’s starboard quarter, and the drifters themselves ceaselessly swept for mines that might have been laid by U-boats in the night. The monitors followed directly behind them while motor launches patrolled on either flank. These were petrol-engined boats, acting now as light anti-submarine escorts, seventy-five feet long and each armed with a three-pounder gun in the bow. And then there were the destroyers, from the thirty-knotters to the fairly new and bigger Tribal class boats, still too slow and underarmed however to meet the new German boats on equal terms.

The ships were all worn and workmanlike. They had held the Straits for three years by a mixture of determination and bluff; the Germans saw the British daring to patrol off the Belgian coast, a bare thirty minutes’ steaming from the destroyers based at Ostende and Zeebrugge, and believed the Dover Patrol and the Dunkerque Squadron to be far more powerful than in fact they were.

Smith watched them, grey ships under a grey sky, and felt a familiar justifiable pride. The depression of reaction had left him now and he was cheerful to match the elation of Sparrow ’s crew. Hadn’t they sunk a U-boat?

Erebus , Trist’s flagship for the day, led the line of monitors and her searchlight blinked orders at Sparrow . In obedience to those orders Dunbar took Sparrow in a long, sweeping quartercircle to starboard to take station astern of the last monitor in the line: Marshall Marmont . Just ahead of her the tug Lively Lady plugged steadily on. There Sparrow stayed as the day grew and the sun climbed the sky. At the Cliffe d’lslande Bank the force turned north-east to steam along the outside of the mine-net barrage that Bacon, Vice-Admiral commanding the Dover Patrol, had laid along the Belgian coast. By mid-morning they were off Ostende, the main force steamed on and Smith and his two ships were left with six motor-launches.

At twelve miles distance the coast could not be seen from the bridge of a little ship like Sparrow but the gunnery officer in Marshall Marmont would see it from her fore-top high above the deck. Smith could only see the buildings of Ostende as a ragged edging to the horizon. North of Ostende, about where the village of De Haan lay beyond that horizon, an aircraft patrolled. He could just make it out with Lorimer’s glasses and decided it had to be German or there would be anti-aircraft fire. He let the glasses hang on their strap. So that was the standing patrol that Morris, the airman, had spoken of.

There was a light breeze out of the north-west and that was what he wanted. So far the weather forecast was right. But the sky to seaward was clouding. The weather was turning bad as he’d guessed it would, and the wind would bring it down on them. But later. Meanwhile he had his orders.

To the signalman he said, “Make to Marshall Marmont : ‘Anchor and prepare for action. Report when ready.’ And tell the motor-launches: ‘Anchor to leeward of Marshall Marmont .’ And to Lively Lady : ‘Patrol to seaward of Marshall Marmont .’”

The tug would be inside the line of Sparrow ’s patrol but he did not want her to anchor. If a submarine appeared and slipped past Sparrow — God forbid! — then at least the tug would be moving. But it was a small point. A submarine would undoubtedly go for the monitor tethered like a helpless beast. She had to be. Bombardment of the port and its installations had to be highly accurate because the town was set close around it and its people must not suffer. Apart from common humanity there was the need not to antagonise them. So the monitor had to be anchored to provide a stationary, exact firing-platform for her two big guns.

Smith’s gaze drifted over his little flotilla and he reflected that this was a first test for all of them. He was watching them and they were watching him — while Trist had hurried on to Zeebrugge where he would not have to watch at all. Smith had taken Wildfire and Bloody Mary off his hands.

That was one worry less for a very worried man. Smith shook his head, sorry for Trist. But then he remembered Dunbar’s warning, that Trist’s caution could be dangerous to them.

The signal hoists broke out and were acknowledged by Garrick aboard the monitor, the leader of the motor launches and, belatedly, by the tug. As Marshall Marmont anchored so the launches anchored in a long-spread line between her and the shore and two or three cables from her. Smith watched them all as he conned Sparrow on her weaving patrol to seaward. The submerged mine-nets were their inshore defence against U-boats. On the southward leg of the patrol he saw the ‘Ready’ signal break out on the monitor. As Sparrow passed the tug she was steaming easily. Her master waved from the wheelhouse as the two ships passed and the dumpy figure in boilersuit and sea boots in the stern also lifted a hand. Smith thought absently that it was crazy for a woman to be at sea — and she had a line over the stern! Fishing! Dunbar had been frank about Victoria Baines’s faults as he saw them. “She’s got an edge to her tongue to take the skin off you and she can be pig-headed. But, by God! She’s a seaman and she’s doing a man’s job and doing it bloody well.”

Smith was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. But he reserved his verdict — a woman of sixty or more for God’s sake, effectively commanding one of H.M. tugs in time of war?

The signalman said, “Monitor reports ‘Ready’ sir.”

“Acknowledge.” And: “Where’s that aeroplane? It’s due.”

He was answered by a call from Buckley acting as look-out: “Four aircraft bearing green two-oh!” He saw the aircraft drifting below the cloud base and watched them through his glasses.

As the lower one approached Buckley called, “Harry Tate, sir!” That would be the RE8, that was to be the spotting aircraft for Marshall Marmont’s guns. Flying high above it were three Sopwith Triplanes, its escort. All of them were from the Royal Naval Air Service field at St. Pol outside Dunkerque. The escort would be needed.

Soon they were making a wide, slow circle overhead and the signalman reported, “From Marshall Marmont , sir: ‘Aircraft in wireless contact.’”