Alan Evans - Ship of Force

Curtis’s lips were pursed and he was whistling as he might have whistled when baiting a line. The same frown of concentration was there. It was a toneless whistle and his lips were dry. The CMB fled over the sea with her fore half lifted clear of the water and her stern dug in and the battlecruiser grew to a giant and then a monster. Curtis eased on the wheel as the thought registered ‘seven hundred yards’, and the CMB spun away to starboard out of the path of Siegfried . The sea lifted in tall towers of upflung water ahead of him and alongside and he could see from the corner of his eye the destroyer to port and plunging across towards him. But he eased the wheel back and the CMB spun again and this time turned in towards Siegfried .

Aboard her they saw the motorboat off the port bow and looking to be standing on end in the sea as she snarled in at them. Curtis peered over the lifted stem and watched the bow of Siegfried , gauging her speed and how she lay to the boat, the distance between. He lifted one hand. The midshipman had been waiting for it, for seconds had been begging for it. Come on. Come on! Any closer and you’ll run aboard her? Come on! Curtis held on because Siegfried was no destroyer under which a torpedo might run if he fired too near her. She was a deep-draughted ship so he would get in close.

Nearly there.

Nearly…

Now!

He cut down the hand, felt the jar, then the leap of the stern as Johnson yanked the release handle and fired the torpedo stern first into the sea. Curtis turned the wheel and the CMB spun to starboard, laid right over in a skidding turn. He held the wheel but sat half-turned in the seat shooting glances astern. The midshipman was yelling, red-faced with excitement, both hands lifted in a ‘thumbs-up’ sign and beyond him Curtis saw the track of the torpedo. He had held on to the last split-second to be certain and now he could watch the track and knew it could not miss. Siegfried was trying to turn away but he had run too close and she had no time. She was firing every gun that would bear, hurling ton after ton of steel and high explosive at the slender, flitting, bouncing black speck in its shifting curtain of spray that jinked and swerved and ran for dear life.

Aboard Sparrow Sanders came up to Smith and reported, “The wounded are on deck. All clear below.” And warned: “She’s making water fast, sir.”

Smith could feel it in the way she listed under him, see it in the way the sea was reaching up on her. “No boats, Sub?”

“No, sir.”

“Rafts, then. Wounded first.”

There were few rafts intact on that shattered deck and it was hell’s own job to clear them, but they got enough over the side to take the wounded and passed them down. The ship was still, lying lifeless in the sea. The big destroyers were moving now, slowly edging away, the one that Sparrow had rammed being towed by the other. Smith could still hear firing and saw that Siegfried had steamed on and left the two destroyers to their own devices. It was the battlecruiser firing and the remainder of her destroyer screen were increasing speed as if to concentrate ahead of her.

He helped the last of the wounded down to a raft and Sanders at his elbow said, “Here, sir.” And thrust a lifebelt at him. “She’s going, sir.”

Smith held the lifebelt but turned away and started to scramble painfully up to the wrecked bridge again. Sanders shouted after him. “Sir! She’ll go any minute , sir!” But Smith ignored him. He reached the bridge and climbed up on to the searchlight platform at the back of it. The light was shattered and the mounting twisted so he could not get on to the platform. He climbed carefully up on to the lamp itself and slowly straightened, balanced there. The glasses still swung on his chest from their strap and he set them to his eyes. Siegfried was easy to find, plunging along with guns blazing. He brought the lenses creeping down, searching the sea — and caught the flying CMB as it hurtled in on the battlecruiser, close and closer until it spun away and raced past Siegfried’s stern. Smith held his breath.

Curtis steered with one hand and one eye past the battlecruiser’s stern, starting to tear away to safety but still half-turned in the cockpit watching for the torpedo. And because she was steaming at nearly thirty knots and starting to turn, Siegfried almost drew clear of the torpedo and left it astern.

Almost.

But Curtis had gone in to ram it down their throats.

He saw the sea heave at Siegfried’s stern and saw the stern, twenty-eight thousand tons or no, lifted out of the sea by the burst of the torpedo. Johnson was capering like a monkey in the torpedo bay, yelling and waving his arms. The destroyer astern of Siegfried was firing, the shells falling close as the CMB swerved and ran away but no one aboard her noticed. Curtis’s leading hand was hammering him on the back and bawling something about “bloody marvellous.” Curtis was numb. The CMB flew over the sea to the south-west and soon the guns ceased firing.

Smith saw the sea spout at Siegfried’s stern and seconds later the thump ! came dully across the sea. He saw her speed fall away, she slewed off course and the screening destroyers turned to her. That was all he saw but it was enough.

He turned and found Buckley on the bridge below him and realised Buckley was bellowing at him, had been bellowing for some time, “For Gawd’s sake, sir! She’s near awash!”

He looked and saw that Buckley was right and Sparrow was settling under them. He started down, slipped and fell but Buckley caught him. The burly seaman was muttering under his breath and scowling, for once out of patience with his wayward officer. But he got Smith down to the deck and into his lifejacket. With Sanders, they jumped.

The rafts were crowded but they found hand-holds on the lines of one of them and hung there watching as Sparrow sank, slowly at first but then at the last with a rush as if to get it over with.

McGraw said, “Puir auld cow.”

Siegfried and her escorts had made off to the north-east, were small with distance when Curtis came seeking Sparrow ’s survivors, the CMB riding high and fast ‘on the step’ and sweeping in wide, lazy arcs until someone aboard her spotted the rafts in the sea. Then she straightened out to point at them and the bow dropped, her speed fell away as the engines’ snarl faded to a low grumbling and she slipped slowly down on them, gently probing her way through the litter of flotsam that was all that was left of Sparrow . Curtis took all of the survivors aboard, cramming them in the torpedo bay, taking them on the deck, anywhere they could hold on. There were thirty-four survivors and of that number fifteen were wounded, one of them, a stoker, severely. Him they settled in the cockpit by Curtis’s legs.

The CMB sat low in the water under its heaped human load, but Curtis said. “Won’t be for long, sir. I made a signal to Marshall Marmont to tell ’em I was going to look for you an’ I asked if there was anything I could do for them. They said, ‘This ship will cope.’”

Smith saw one or two grins on the faces of Sparrow ’s survivors. They remembered that signal.

Curtis went on, “So I suppose she’s floating and I can transfer your crew when we come up with her.”

Smith nodded. He sat on top of the cockpit so Curtis was speaking in his ear. Buckley crouched on the deck by his shoulder. As the CMB got cautiously under way and her bow swung around he looked ahead and saw the smoke that marked Marshall Marmont . He watched all through the long minutes as the CMB cruised steadily towards her.