Alan Evans - Ship of Force

“Starboard! Aye, aye, sir.” Sanders bent to the voice pipe to tell the torpedo-gunner. “We’ll engage to starboard!”

Smith ordered, “Midships!..Starboard ten!” Sparrow had swung around past the stern of the last destroyer in the line and he saw that she had slipped and was moving, going astern to get clear of the line but her head swinging seawards. He shouted at Sanders and pointed and Sanders waved. The starboard helm brought Sparrow ’s head turning towards the shore again so she was describing a tight circle. Sanders crouched over the torpedo sight. The destroyer that had way on her was over Sparro w’s starboard quarter…now coming abeam as Sparrow came around…

Sanders croaked, “Fire!” He sounded as hoarse as Smith felt.

The torpedo, Sparrow ’s second and last plunged over the side into the sea and its track ran away into the night. The German boat was boxing the compass as she tried to turn on her heel and haul out of the line. Smith saw her steady then and ease forward, heading seaward and he thought: We’ll miss her! And: She won’t miss us. The destroyer was firing and there was a crash aft and they felt the jar of it through the deck and the blast that pushed at them. Splinters clanged off the funnel and whirred across the bridge.

Sanders reported, “Think it was the tubes, sir.” And a moment later: “Gunner doesn’t answer.” Another crash aft and Smith winced. That destroyer was firing her four-inch guns and Sparrow could not stand much of that. He saw Buckley still at the back of the bridge below the searchlight platform and beckoned him. As Sparrow ’s stem pointed again at the gap between the lines of anchored destroyers and tugs he ordered, “Meet her…”

To Buckley: “Report the damage aft!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

Smith told Gow, “Steer that!” But Gow knew already, was holding Sparrow on the line to take her back between tugs and destroyers, a line as if ruled in chalk on a board.

Sanders was squinting at his watch and now looked at Smith. “Missed again, sir.”

“Not surprised, the way she was shifting about to haul out of the line.”

The voice pipe from the torpedo-platform whistled and Smith bent to it. “Bridge!”

Buckley’s voice came up the pipe. “Gunner’s hurt bad, sir. They’re taking him below, an’ the crew of the six-pounder right aft, but the gun’s all right. I’ve got a feller here to load for me an’ I’ll work it with your permission, sir.”

“Carry on!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

Smith straightened then ducked instinctively as another fourinch shell from the destroyer ripped over the masthead. He could see her, just, and she was turning her head from the sea so as to fire broadside at her target. The gap between the lines of destroyers and tugs offered some sort of brief sanctuary again but Sparrow had yet to reach it. Lightning played far down the line and showed others of the destroyers moving, one of the tugs swinging inshore from her bow anchor.

Still no sign of Curtis. He wondered if the CMB had taken an unlucky hit right at the start. One of those four-inch shells would blow the fragile little craft apart.

The CMB was up on the step and tearing in again towards the coast and the ships. Curtis prayed that the second torpedo would not jam. For a second he had Sparrow ’s searchlights as a mark then they went out but now he could see the destroyers against the light of the fires that burned along the shore and he knew what the fires were. He saw he was heading for the tail of the line but held his course. There was a ship, a destroyer there, last of the line and she was hauling out of it, her silhouette foreshortening as her bow pointed towards him. All this seen over the bucking bow of the CMB through the spray that came back in two long, white wings as if she was nearly flying.

Curtis shouted again, “Attacking!”

The destroyer was still turning, presenting her side to him and as he looked past her bow, to port that is, he could make out another ship beyond her. Sparrow ? Both of them flickered with muzzle-flashes, both of them firing hard. Sparrow seemed to be only creeping — was she disabled? He swore softly. But the German boat was leaping up at them and broadside now. He saw no water spouts but heard the rip of the shells overhead and knew they were firing over, the speed of the CMB cheating the layers. Then the lightning came again and a clap of thunder like the last trump that even drowned the roar of the engines. In that split-second, blue-white blaze he saw the destroyer and she was big ahead of him.

Close!

Nearly…

Now! “ Fire !” And this time he felt the kick at the stern and his heart leapt with it. He turned to port to swing out of the torpedo’s track and away from the destroyer and the CMB hurtled out into the dark with the guns still vainly following her, shells falling now in her wake.

Smith saw the CMB in that frozen instant of light that showed the big destroyer and the now ragged line of the rest of them, the tugs, the burning lighters with the flames momentarily made pale, the tiny scurrying figures on the shore. He saw the CMB without Sanders’s high-pitched yell and out-thrust, pointing finger. She was racing in with her stem high and the rest of her almost hidden by the curtain of spray that glittered in the light. Then the night clamped down around them once more and their night vision was lost, though the burning lighters were still clear. Firing briefly ceased as the layers rubbed at their eyes and blinked away the wheeling stars.

The flame seemed hardly more than a muzzle-flash but it showed the climbing spout of water on the far side of the destroyer at the tail of the line and showed her lurch, then the thump of the explosion came shuddering across the sea and Lorimer shouted, “Got him! Oh, bloody good, Curtis!”

The explosion was followed an instant later by another. This time the flame could not be taken for a muzzle-flash. It soared out of the waist of the ship as if it would never cease climbing and with it went whirling debris and after it poured the smoke. This time Lorimer did not shout but gaped silently as the flame dwindled, the smoke spread and the destroyer rolled over on her side and showed her bottom.

A flash from the torpedo’s explosion igniting a magazine? Smith thought so. But the certainty was that she would sink in seconds.

He turned away. “Full ahead both!”

The rain became a deluge. They were back between the lines, running through that narrow neck of water and now some of the destroyers’ guns, tormented beyond bearing by this wisp of a ship that had fired on them with impunity, fired in return. They took the chance of hitting a tug, of firing on their own ships, and some of them did. But some of them hit Sparrow . This time Buckley pumped shell after shell at what remained of the lighters and into the tugs. McGraw found he had a different kettle of fish. His targets, the destroyers, loomed big as houses but these were firing back. He still fired the little six-pounder as fast as his sweating, swearing loader could feed it.

For long, mad minutes they were between the lines but then they came up on the last destroyer and she had slipped and was moving ahead. Smith shouted, “Starboard ten!” Sparrow swung to slide past the big boat’s stern and the open sea lay before her. Out of the night burst the CMB with both of her Vickers machine-guns manned and hammering away at the destroyers’ decks and bridges as she tore past them. She spun away from the line, the machine-guns fell silent and that tight turn brought her sweeping close to Sparrow before racing out into the darkness again.