As Feudal came round on the starboard side of the convoy, they saw that Wrestler had hoisted a signal and the yeoman of signals sang out. ‘Wrestler in contact, sir!’
Kelly’s eyes narrowed. William Latimer, the captain of Wrestler was well known to him. He had met him in 1927 up the Yangtze, when they’d stood alongside each other at Chinkiang with a small group of sailors holding off a mob of Chinese intent on murdering every white in sight. Kelly had been a lieutenant commander then and Latimer had been a midshipman. He’d done well in the intervening years, though Wrestler was his first ship and he was still young enough and enthusiastic enough to want to depth-charge everything from a clump of seaweed to a shoal of herring.
Wrestler was steering away from the convoy now, pitching drunkenly, huge sheets of spray lifting over her bridge. She was steaming full ahead and it seemed that Latimer was going to drop something, if only for luck. At that moment, another flag fluttered to Wrestler’s yard arm.
‘Wrestler attacking, sir!’
They all watched, wondering how good the contact was, and saw the depth charges go down. After a few moments the sea bulged and huge columns of grey-green water rose high above them. As the spray settled, they waited with their glasses trained.
‘From Wrestler, sir. “Lost contact.”’
As they came round, the spray slashing across the bridge to coat it with a thin sparkling crust and fill mouths with the taste of salt, they were close to the other ship, and Kelly leaned on the bridge coaming, his eyes narrow and glittering as he watched from under the tarnished gold of his cap.
‘Call her up, yeoman. Tell her to continue her search and ask her the nature of the contact.’
As the stream of flags shot up and the lamp flickered, the yeoman called out. ‘Contact firm, sir. Classified as U-boat, moving to port.’
‘Ask ’em what they think now?’
‘Still think it’s a U-boat,’ Latimer replied. ‘“I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”’
Kelly smiled. Where most naval officers relied on the Bible for their clever signals, Latimer used Shakespeare. He’d quoted The Merchant of Venice, he remembered, as they’d stood on the bund at Chinkiang under a shower of brickbats from the Chinese mob.
He guessed Latimer was right. If the submarine had been on the point of attacking the convoy when she was contacted she would certainly have moved in the direction Latimer had indicated.
‘Make “Continue the search!”’ he said.
Together, the two ships watched the convoy pass them, moving slowly through the water, suspecting that the U-boat would continue to follow the merchantmen. As Feudal swung in a wide circle towards Wrestler, the Asdic-repeater’s note was monotonous, thin and featureless above the thump and crash and hiss of the waves, then suddenly it changed to a solid echo that made the operator jump. In his tiny soundproofed compartment, his straining ears were almost deafened.
‘Asdic to bridge! HE reciprocating engines green oh-one-oh!’
Kelly spoke over his shoulder to the yeoman of signals. ‘Make to Wrestler “Have strong contact.”’
The Asdic echo sharpened. ‘Contact moving slowly right!’
‘Starboard twenty!’
As the speed dropped, the Asdic’s note came more clearly. Ping-ping-ping-pong.
‘Good God, we’re almost on top of him!’ Kelly snapped. ‘Full ahead both. Depth charge crews stand by – fire pattern. All guns prepare to engage to starboard.’
‘Target drawing away right.’
As the amatol-packed canisters exploded, the sea was split apart with an effervescent roar. Hundreds of tons of foam-white water rose slowly, hung motionless against the sky, then dematerialised into spray to fall back to the surface in a scum of dirty froth. As it settled, the Asdic operator called out.
‘Lost contact, sir!’
Even as his voice died, however, the yeoman of signals came in again. ‘Wrestler’s signalling, sir. “In contact.’’’
‘Good for Wrestler!’
The excitement was intense, everybody holding his breath. Wrestler was coming round like an express train now, the waves lifting over her bridge in a vast cloud of spray, and they saw the depth charges arc outwards from her stern and drop into her wake. A few moments later, the sea domed, lifted in a colossal mushroom and disintegrated in spray drifting over the foamy circle where the explosive had disturbed it.
‘Contact, sir! Moving left!’
Somewhere below them, the submarine was trying to squirm to safety, and, weaving in at right angles to complete the lethal pattern, Feudal dropped her own charges, and they saw the sea erupt once more.
‘Contact lost, sir.’
But Wrestler was hurtling past at full speed, bunting fluttering at the yardarm.
‘Wrestler still in contact, sir.’
As Feudal swung, Wrestler lay over on her beam ends and they saw the depth charges go again.
‘U-boat surfacing, sir! – port bow!’ The yell came from the bridge look-out, wild and excited, and as the sea settled, from the blur of spray a black shape like a pointing hand rose at a steep angle to the surface, exposing sixty feet of the U-boat’s bows, with the jumping wire and the dark holes of the torpedo tubes and a belly streaked with rust and weed. All round it the sea boiled with the escaping air.
Immediately, X-gun fired and the first shot struck at water level as the lifting steel tube steadied. Then the pom-pom crew got going and, enveloped in smoke and spray, the great helpless metal whale lurched, lifted higher, paused, as though suspended from the sky, then began to slide slowly back. As it went, there was a heavy underwater explosion and it vanished in a swirling whirlpool of water.
This time, as the sea resumed its place, they saw it was black with oil and in it things were floating – bits of wood, clothing, a life jacket. Wrestler stopped, her bow dipping as her speed dropped, and lay surrounded by wreckage, her crew crowding the rails busy with buckets and grappling hooks.
‘Wrestler reports a body, sir. They have it on board.’
As they surged past on the side away from the debris, the two ships looked like wooden horses on a fairground roundabout, moving up and down, one against the other, as they lifted to the waves, two old grey horses with sides that were streaked with rust and caked with salt. Men on both ships were cheering each other and waving congratulations and Latimer was on the bridge of Wrestler as they went past, yelling into the loudhailer.
‘We now have two bodies!’
As they drew ahead, Kelly waved. ‘Make “Well done,”’ he said to the yeoman of signals. Though the submarine would be credited to the group, it was undoubtedly Wrestler’s victory.
The lamp clattered and it was without surprise that Kelly heard the yeoman sing out.
‘Wrestler replying. “I have done service to the state. Othello.”’ Trust Latimer to come up with something clever, Kelly thought. ‘Make “Resume station and confine signals to facts.”’
That ought to shut him up, he thought with a grim smile.
There was no point in squashing enthusiasm but, given a chance, Latimer would be sending sonnets. He’d buy him a drink when they got home to show there was no ill feeling.
Inishtrahull and Kintyre vanished into the mist astern and dawn was just breaking over the mountains of Argyllshire as Feudal led the convoy into the Clyde. The channel opened in front of them, with the silent pinnacle of Ailsa Craig, the jagged summit of Arran and, beyond, the softer outline of Bute. Strung along the shore were the coastal resorts of Ayrshire and Dumbarton, then they passed the Cloch light into Greenock. To the north the tawny and purple mountains lifted, and finally the coast crumbled into a rubbish heap of ugly tenements and warehouses.
Mail came aboard, mostly bills, but there was a letter from Hugh to inform Kelly he hoped to see him shortly. He had joined the Fleet Air Arm before the war was a fortnight old and he was now finishing his training on Sea Gladiators. He’d not swerved in his belief in air power, but it had pleased Kelly that he’d chosen the Navy.
Below decks, the sailors were still swearing to the Customs men that the nylons they’d bought in New York were personal gear, and a furious stoker was drinking himself silly on bourbon rather than let the government officials have it, when the Rear-Admiral (D)’s barge was seen approaching from the pier.
‘Hello,’ the Sub said. ‘Something in the wind!’
The Admiral was in a hurry and not inclined to mince words. The prevailing mood as they’d tied up to the buoy had been light. They were due for a boiler-clean and a boiler-clean meant leave, and the feeling of relief had been clear throughout the ship. The first lieutenant had had his little joke with the coxswain and the cook with Jack Dusty, and somehow they were all together. But now suddenly, the sky had clouded over, because an admiral didn’t appear alongside a ship at full speed and scramble over the side just to inform them that a boiler-clean was all right with him. There was something unpleasant in the offing, and in a moment, the light-hearted jokes became bitter, and the word ‘bastard’, which had been a term of affection up to that moment, suddenly had a sharper edge.
The Admiral pulled no punches. ‘You’ll have to put off your boiler-clean,’ he said. ‘It’s hard, I know, but there it is. We’re short of ships. Between ‘em, the politicals have just about done for us and I don’t know which I detest most – the ancient glittering eyes of the reactionaries or the joyless dogma of the left wing intellectuals.’
Rumbelo passed over a drink and, as the Admiral swallowed it, Kelly probed gently. ‘What’s the job, sir?’
The Admiral grunted. ‘We suspect the Germans are up to something in the North. Max Horton stationed his submarines down the Norwegian coast weeks ago and they were in a position to stop the Germans, but those asses in Westminster wouldn’t have it and they’ve been withdrawn.’
‘And us, sir?’
‘We’re making up a new flotilla. You’ll lose Sappho and Sanderling but you’re getting Freelance. They’re sneaking ore ships down the Inner Leads and we think there’s going to be trouble because we have reports of capital ships moving in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven. You’re to take station off Narvik and keep watch. And while you’re there, you’re to keep a look out for Kölndom. She’s an old freighter but she’s believed to be carrying German naval and military experts from the Argentine. They’ve been there ever since we got Graf Spee in December, and some of them are important. She’s probably even armed and we think she’s making for home, because she was reported up near the Denmark Strait, heading for Bergen. Admiral Whitworth’s up there with Renown and four destroyers and the Twentieth Destroyer Flotilla’s been ordered to join him. You’ll be attached for orders.’
‘When do we leave, sir?’
‘At once. Freelance will join you from Scapa en route.’
The nylons remained on board as the Customs men were shooed off at full speed and the stoker who’d polished off the bourbon was heard complaining drunkenly that he’d sunk his bloody booze at the rush for nothing. On the whole, though, they took it quietly, almost too quietly, because so long as the lower deck had a drip on the Navy was all right. There was a minor brush forward when the chief buffer ticked someone off for leaving his dhobying about, and when the officer of the day went to attend to it, an unidentified voice from the back shouted ‘You can chew my starboard nipple!’
In the end Kelly cleared lower deck and explained the situation, talking quietly and avoiding resounding phrases. They accepted it in good spirit. He’d once considered he was no good with any words but swear-words, but he’d since learned he was considered an excellent speaker. He tried it man to man on them and insisted that he’d get them leave as soon as he could, but for the moment it was felt that the Germans were on the move and they had a job to do. As he turned away, the ship was as still as a church, but within half an hour from his cabin he heard a raucous voice singing. ‘Officers don’t worry me – not much–!’
He smiled. It was going to be all right.
They slipped the buoy at nightfall and steamed south for Kildonan, Sanda and the Mull of Kyntyre, the very route they’d just covered in the opposite direction. But then, instead of turning south-west, they turned north and headed towards Islay and Tiree. The next morning, Freelance joined them off Cape Wrath and they headed north round the Shetlands.
As they headed into the North Sea, the flotilla signals officer handed Kelly a signal.
‘KÖLNDOM PASSED NORTH OF ICELAND AND FAEROES. NOW BELIEVED OFF NARVIK MOVING SOUTH INSIDE NORWEGIAN TERRITORIAL WATERS.’
‘Let’s just hope that by the time we arrive,’ Kelly said, ‘she’s outside Norwegian territorial waters.’
Making their landfall off Trondheim, the four destroyers swept north in line astern. What they might expect, Kelly had no idea. He didn’t think Kölndom would cause much trouble, but German destroyers were said to be operating off the coast of Norway to protect German ships carrying Swedish iron from Narvik. And the German destroyers were bigger than the British, while with two converted V/W class ships, his flotilla could hardly be called a strong one.
It was bitterly cold, because spring hadn’t yet shown any signs of arriving in these northern latitudes and the land – towering walls of black rock and snow, with patches of green and the darker verdure of pine trees – was faintly depressing. There were also large coils of thick mist that made visibility uncertain and worried him in case he missed his quarry. There was a lot of traffic in the Leads and, with the mist growing thicker, the lookouts were warned to be doubly alert.
‘We’d look fine if we ran into her,’ the first lieutenant said.
‘There’s nothing like a collision,’ Kelly agreed, ‘to ruin your entire day.’
Nobody knew what Kölndom looked like but someone found an old copy of The Times in the wardroom which showed her alongside Graf Spee in the harbour of Montevideo. It wasn’t a good picture because she was half obscured, but she seemed more modern than they’d expected, about eight thousand tons with a high bow and a flaring billet-head. She didn’t look desperately fast but Kelly was under no delusion that even if she didn’t carry a gun there would be arms on board.