Andrew Wareham - End to Illusion

“It will, too. Jimmy!”

Jimmy roared and the five boats clustered together and briefly talked tactics, all very casually and informally.

“Will the Vickers be useful at close range, sir? They are on high-angle mountings, are they not?”

“They are, Adams, officially, that is. I know the lads have worked on ours so they will come to the horizontal as well. Good with their hands, trawlermen, used to fixing their own machinery at sea. Can’t return half-empty just because a winch or somesuch has broken, man!”

It was not the way things were done in the real Navy. It was possible that the Navy was wrong in some of its ways, Christopher concluded. Not to worry, it was no concern of his, not any longer.

They fell back from the chase and turned north after dark and before moonrise, the trawlers blacked out and as silent as they could manage. Two hours at a quiet three knots and they hove-to, the five side by side and comfortable.

“Get your head down, Adams. Four hours before we get under way and you need some sleep. You are not one of us – trawlermen sleep an hour at a time every third day, man – well known fact! You soft Navy boys need your beauty sleep!”

It was friendly banter, even if less than tactful. Christopher did as he was advised.

The moon was still high when they headed south, the sky cloud-free, as nearly always. They set a pair of lookouts in the bows and picked up speed, having decided that they wanted to enter action, if it occurred, at more than a crawl.

An hour and the lookouts called something black due south. Christopher joined them, picked up a dark lump in the distance.

“An island? Maybe thick black coal smoke…”

He ran to the wheelhouse.

“Might be clouds of smoke. If the Turks are pushing those old tramps to full speed, they will be churning it out, from all Tromso said.”

“Well thought, Adams. Jimmy! Pass the word down the line. All to man the guns and put one up the spout.”

“Aye, wish I was back home and doing just that, Skipper! Dorothea! Man the bloody guns and load ‘em! Pass the word!”

“Go back up the bows, Adams. See if you can spot their course. When’s moonset?”

“About thirty minutes. I don’t have an almanac aboard to give precise times.”

“Didn’t know there was such things, Adams! Half an hour will do. If can be, it would be useful to start shooting while we had a bit of light. Any luck, one of them will catch fire and give us a target while we stay less easy seen out in the dark. Not a simple task, aiming at gun flashes.”

Five minutes and Christopher was content that the black mass to the south was coal smoke and that it was moving somewhat east of north and at as much as ten knots.

“Crossing our bows at a slight diagonal, sir and at most two miles distant. Probably at that point in ten to fifteen minutes. Can’t be more accurate in this light, sir. We are making about eight knots now?”

“Aye… Was we to push up to eleven, say, Adams, we would be within range of the pompoms and Vickers as they crossed us.”

Christopher quickly checked the calculations in his head, agreed it to be so. Murchison called down the engineroom voicepipe for full speed.

“Jimmy! Shout eleven knots and hold close and ready to turn three points to port.”

The message went down the short line, the trawlers no more than fifty yards apart.

“Do ye wish to pick up a rifle, Adams? It will give ye something to do when we’re busy.”

“Every little helps, sir.”

Christopher noticed four of the deckhands carrying Lee-Enfields, handling them casually and familiarly. He shrugged and took one of the pair in the wheelhouse. He had been trained in the rifle at Dartmouth, was competent but doubted he was the match of the men on deck – they looked wholly at home with the weapons.

“Boer War with you, sir?”

“Aye, all four of them. They know what they’re doing. They’ll keep heads down on the bridge of one of they gunboats.”

They waited to be spotted, the layer of the four inch keeping his gun on the foremost black lump, now just visible as a warship, lower and leaner than a merchantman and with a tall mast that no commercial steamer needed.

“Within the mile, I would say, Adams.”

“Moon setting almost behind them, sir. We are out in the dark.”

“We are so, man. Well positioned; ye placed us well. They must be making a good twelve knots. Fast for tramp ships. They will have selected the best they had, no doubt.”

They waited another minute.

“Four cables, I would say, sir.”

Biggar heaved on the wheel and shouted to open fire. The four inch gave its crack and the other four joined in within the second, reloading fast even in the dark.

“Jimmy! Shout Tromso and Bergen to aim for the rear pair!”

The pompoms joined in, followed by the Vickers and they spotted hits aboard their targets.

The darkness began to ease and they could pick out all four ships clearly.

“Lead gunboat is falling off course, sir. On fire towards the stern.”

Christopher lifted the rifle to his shoulder and loosed ten rounds rapid that he thought might have come aboard the lead boat.

“Showing willing, sir!”

“Every mickle, they say, Adams!”

Fire was coming their way, the second gunboat manning a pair of twelve pounders or something like. There was an explosion aboard Bergen at the end of the line and she fell out of the formation. A heavy automatic opened up from the leading Turk and hosed across Dorothea.

“Hotchkiss revolving gun, likely sir…”

Two pompoms responded, targeting the automatic gun’s position, silencing it. Dorothea’s four inch opened fire again after a slight delay, presumably with new crew. The Vickers from the four remaining trawlers were firing prolonged bursts, using up belt after belt. Christopher hoped they knew what they were doing, had a useful target.

The second gunboat fell silent, fire spreading rapidly on her foredeck as a ready-use locker blew. The lead boat disappeared, an explosion ripping off her stern and sinking her in the second.

“Torpedo warhead, maybe, Adams?”

“Could be, sir. I don’t recognise the boats. Fairly new. Only twelve pounders so likely to have tubes as main armament.”

There was a another, lesser explosion and they turned to the tramps, one of them showing a mass of steam as well as coal smoke.

“Hit her boiler, sir. She has a flag flying…”

“Returning fire as well, Adams.”

There were soldiers firing rifles, a lot of them. The trawlers turned all of their attention to the merchant ships, hulling them repeatedly, the quick firers churning out five rounds a minute at close range and repeatedly penetrating the thin plate of the unarmoured hulls.

“They’re going, both of them, sir!”

The one capsized, slowly, showing hundreds of troops falling and jumping overboard. The other sank quickly by the stern, water ripping through the bulkheads and taking her down inside the minute. Neither launched a boat.

“Rescue, sir? Oh, Christ!”

The rising sun showed a sea turned red with blood. Sharks by the hundred were tearing into the men in the water, ripping them apart. They closed the site, were unable to pick up a single survivor.

They came away, sickened by the screams and wails of agony.

“Dorothea has wounded men aboard and two dead, sir. Bergen has damage and four dead, no wounded, as well. Can’t risk sending them back on their own. We have all expended a large amount of ammunition, sir.”

They turned about and made haste to the Canal and then to Alexandria, preferring to take their wounded to naval doctors rather than set them ashore to unknown military or civilian hospitals.

The Admiral took their reports and then called Christopher to his presence.