Alan Evans - Ship of Force

Smith ordered the signalman, “Make the ‘recall’ to the CMB.” The light flickered and out in the darkness another replied.

Sparrow was working up speed again now and making fifteen knots. The crew of the twelve-pounder stood around panting, with heaving chests. They were stripped to the waist, sootsmeared, running with sweat and the rain that coursed down over their heads and bodies. Their gun would no longer bear on the ships lying astern. The six-pounders aft and in the waist still banged away and Sparrow was still under fire. Rain hid the ships now but their gun flashes marked them and Smith knew that was all Buckley and McGraw had to aim at, and that was the case with their opposite numbers in the enemy destroyers.

He told Sanders, “Cease firing!”

In the ringing silence that followed he ordered, “Revolutions for fifteen knots.” If there was pursuit they would elude it by stealth and not speed, not by hammering away with flames from the funnels to give them away. He found he was moving slowly and it was an effort to think. The men stood around dumbly, numbly under the rain. Maybe they weren’t sure that they were still alive? He wasn’t sure himself. He had no right to be. He had known it was an awful risk from the beginning but surprise had carried them through the first of it. Then when he had steered to enter that narrow lane again he had known it was a death trap, that the destroyer firing at him at the tail of the line would run along the outside of it and catch him as he came out. It was a box that he and Sparrow would never get out of. But then Curtis had attacked. He could close his eyes and see the CMB roaring in…

He said, “Mr. Lorimer! Get back to your chart and keep our track. I want to be outside the nets before daylight. Mr. Sanders! Check every gun and report to me. We stay at action stations till I order otherwise.” There was no bridge messenger. “I want a messenger on the bridge. Whoever you send, tell him first to get hold of the cooks and they’re to produce a hot drink and any grub for the men that they can knock up.”

The ship came to slow life again as the hands turned to, repairing damage where they could, clearing the rolling, empty cartridge cases from the deck, throwing wreckage over the side. Brodie reported three dead, one of them the gunner, and eleven wounded. Smith heard him tell McGraw and heard his reply: “The rest of us are bloody lucky to be alive. I cannae believe it.”

Smith stood on the bridge and when his hands started to shake he jammed them in his pockets.

Lucky to be alive. But it was over now.

There was no more lightning and the thunder rumbled away in the distance. The rain eased, stopped. When Sparrow stole cautiously through the gap in the mine-nets the cloud-cover was breaking up and stars showed. It was now just a warm, still summer’s night.

He stood on Sparrow ’s bridge and he was very tired but he told himself it was over now, that he only had to wait awhile until it was day to see the end of it. Sparrow slipped softly over that still, dark sea at an easy ten knots, steadily patrolling up and down outside the mine-net barrage and waiting for dawn. Smith wanted to see the results of the night’s action, and proposed to run in through the gap in the mine-nets and close the shore until he could see. He was certain there would be nothing but the wreckage of the lighters but he wanted to present a visual report of that. And if, incredibly, the big destroyers still lay there? Well, Marshall Marmont should be up soon with her two big guns to give him cover. He did not believe they would be needed. After the night attack the enemy would suspect that a large force was at sea and Sparrow only a small part of it. They would have gone home.

He would go when he had finished the job.

Sanders stepped up on to the bridge with a mug of tea steaming in either hand and offered one to Smith. Sanders, like all of them, like the ship herself, was the worse for wear. His jacket was scorched and had great holes burnt in it. What light there was showed him hollow-eyed. Smith thought the boy would sleep for a week when they reached port and that he had earned it, as Sparrow had earned the rest she would get in dockyard hands. Both torpedo-tubes were mangled, one of her six-pounders was twisted and useless and another had been blown over the side. At the moment it did not matter about the tubes because she had no torpedoes left to fire anyway. But there was a hole in the deck aft, a lump chewed out of her stern and another hole in the turtle-back fo’c’sle. A shell had burst between the first and second funnels and blasted away more of the wreckage of the wireless shack. It was a bitterly ironic thought that if the wireless operators had survived Sparrow ’s previous actions they would still have died in this one. Yet miraculously she still functioned as a fighting-ship. She had the twelve-pounder and three of her sixpounders and they had been cleared of what wreckage could be cut away. She had not been holed below or near the water-line and her engines were intact.

Like the rest of them, she had survived.

Not all. There were the three dead and eleven wounded men below in the wardroom.

The crew were still at action stations but though the look-outs were awake, the men at the guns slept where they were, curled on the deck or propped against the mountings. Smith could see them heaped around the twelve-pounder. They sprawled as if struck down and slept like the dead. He envied them.

He turned and looked astern to where the CMB kept station on them but all he could see was the white splash of her bow-wave. Earlier she had run alongside and Smith had seen that she, too, was scarred but Curtis had reported the torpedo firing-gear repaired. And said longingly, “What a night for a man to go fishing.”

Smith grinned tiredly. Victoria Baines had taught that boy some bad habits. Fishing from one of His Majesty’s ships! Or had he taught her, as he had fished when a farmer’s son in the creek by his home? And that was not so long ago.

His smile faded as he faced forward. It was quiet. So quiet that but for the hum of the fans and the engines’ soft beat they would be able to hear the guns at Nieuport that never stopped. He thought that in the German lines the troops would be standing to for the dawn and maybe a British counter-attack. But not to attack themselves. Not now. It would start to get light soon. Already he thought the visibility was gradually…

“Ship fine on the starboard bow!” The look-out called hoarsely, pointed. “Think it’s the tug, sir!” It was the tug Lively Lady trudging down on them and as the gap between them closed Smith made out, astern of her at the end of the tow, the flat-iron shape of Marshall Marmont .

Sanders said, “She’s right on time, sir.” And when Smith grunted, sipping at the tea, “Pity we didn’t leave her anything to do.”

“I’m glad to see them.” For he had sent them on a risky passage, at night and without an escort. Because it was another proof of the loyalty of Garrick, of all of them. They deserved to, and would, share in the success and that was what it was. Marshall Marmont would follow Sparrow home and nobody would laugh. He said, “Make to both of them: ‘Well done. Good to see you.’”

The lamp clattered and a light winked in reply from the bridge of the monitor. “Glad to be here.”

Marshall Marmont , his ‘ship of force’. God, he was tired! When they got back there would be a blazing row over the way he had stolen her but he didn’t care. The landing had been stopped, and he had been proved right.

He ordered, “Starboard ten.” Sparrow had passed the monitor and now turned to swing around her stern and come up on her seaward side.