Atlantic Fury (14 page)

‘We're still under the lee.'

My bag had been dumped on the bunk immediately aft of his. I stripped to my vest and pants and got into it, pulling the blankets up over my head to shut out the grey light from the portholes. The time was ten to six. I must have slept, but it wasn't a deep sleep, for I was conscious all the time of the movement of the ship, the sounds, the pulsing of the engines. I knew when we turned the bottom of Wiay Island for the bunk began to heave and every now and then there was a crash as though the bows had hit a concrete wall; at each blow the vessel staggered and a shiver ran through her. Vaguely I heard McDermott stumble out to the heads. Later he was sick in his bunk.

The steward woke me shortly after eight, a teenage youngster in a khaki pullover balancing a cup of tea. ‘I don't know whether you'd care for some breakfast, sir. The Skipper said to ask you.'

I told him I would, though the battering was much worse now that I was awake. ‘Where are we?'

‘Off Lochmaddy, sir. Half an hour and we'll be in the Sound. It'll be quieter then.'

The cabin reeked of vomit, sickly sweet and mixed with the smell of human sweat. I dressed quickly and breakfasted in solitary state, burnt sausage and fried bread with the fiddles on the table, the blue settee cushions on the floor and the framed photograph of L8610 banging at the wall. I smoked a cigarette, thinking about Laerg and the ship stuck in Shelter Bay. Lucky for them the wind was in the north. If it had come in southerly during the night … I got up and went along the alleyway for'ard. A curtain was drawn across the open door to the Captain's cabin. There was the sound of gentle snoring, and behind the closed door opposite I heard the buzz of the radio operator's key. I slid back the door to the wheelhouse and went in.

The deck was almost steady now. A big, heavily built man stood at the wheel, dressed like the officers in a white polo-necked sweater. There was nobody else there, but the door to the port side wing bridge stood open and almost immediately the Number One appeared framed in the gap. ‘Port ten.'

‘Port ten of wheel on, sir,' the helmsman repeated.

‘Steady now.'

‘Steady. Steering three-o-four, sir.'

Wentworth went to the chart table, checked with his parallel line against the compass rose. ‘Steer three-one-o.'

‘Three-one-o, sir.'

He straightened from the chart table and looked across at me. ‘Skipper's got his head down. Did you manage to get some sleep?'

‘A certain amount.' And I asked him if there was any news.

‘He didn't get off.' And he added, ‘The wind apparently – or so he says. It was round into the north-east and a gust caught him. Personally I think he dragged his kedge anchor when he tried that first time. Anyway, he's right up against the beach now, almost broadside-on to it.'

‘You're going to Laerg then?'

He nodded. ‘Going to have a shot at it, anyway. They've dispatched a Navy tug. But the Clyde's over two hundred miles away and she'll be butting straight into it. We're the only vessel that can reach Laerg by next high water.' He glanced through the for'ard porthole and then went out on to the open wing bridge again. ‘Starboard five.'

The needle of the indicator half right of the helmsman swung to five as he spun the wheel. I crossed to the port side where the chart table stood, a mahogany bank of drawers. Spread out on the top of it was Chart No. 2642; it showed the Sound littered with rocks and islands, the buoyed channel very narrow. ‘That's Pabbay straight ahead,' Wentworth said, leaning his elbows on the table. ‘Steer two-nine-six.'

‘Steer two-nine-six.'

Through the porthole I looked the length of the ship. The tank hold was an empty shell with vertical walls and a flat bottom that ended abruptly at a steel half gate. Beyond the gate was the black hole of the beaching exit with the raised ramp acting as a bulkhead immediately behind the curved steel bow doors. Water sloshed in the open hold and sprung securing hooks banged in their racks. The vertical walls were topped by steel decking that ran like twin alleyways the length of the ship to finish at a small winch platform. This platform was swinging now against a back-cloth of sea and islands; it steadied as the helmsman reported. ‘Steering two-nine-six.' Pabbay was on the starboard bow then, a smooth hump of an island, emerald-green in a drab grey world; whilst I had slept a thin film of cloud had covered the sky.

Wentworth swung himself up the ladder to the open bridge immediately above the wheelhouse. He was back in a moment with three compass bearings which he ruled in on the chart to produce a fix. Watching him, intent, alert, entirely concentrated, I thought how young he was; a soldier in charge of a ship. That was something new to me. Later I learned that he came from a sea-faring family. Not his father, who kept a pub at Burnham Overy, but further back when every staithe along the North Norfolk coast was packed with sailing ships. He was very proud of the fact that one of his ancestors had sailed with Nelson who'd been born at the neighbouring village of Burnham Thorpe. The sea was in his blood and the fact that he was driving a ship at her maximum speed of around ten knots through a tortuous channel in a rock-infested Sound he accepted as no more than part of the day's work; accepted, too, the fact that beyond the Sound the North Atlantic waited. He ordered a slight adjustment of course and then turned to me. ‘Another half hour and we'll be out of the lee of Harris. If you'd like to know what we're running into …' He reached across the chart table and removed a clipped sheaf of message forms from its hook. ‘The synopsis makes nice reading.' His grin was friendly, unconcerned.

The top message, scribbled in pencil, read:
Weather forecast 0645. Gale warning: Warning of N gales in operation sea areas Rockall, Bailey, Faroes, South-East Iceland: NW gales areas Cromarty, Forties, Viking. Synopsis for 0600 GMT: a complete depression moving ENE towards Norway will affect all northern sea areas of the British Isles. This depression is likely to intensify over the next 24 hours. Another depression five hundred miles W of Ireland is almost stationary and there is a belt of high pressure over Greenland. Forecast sea area Hebrides: Winds NW or N force 7, reaching gale force 8 later. Visibility moderate to good with some rain or sleet
.

‘Sounds like a pleasant trip,' I said. ‘What's the barometer say?'

He pushed the chart aside and pointed to the log book. ‘Nine-eight-two. Falling.' In fact, the log showed that it had dropped 2 points in the last hour, 5 since we'd sailed. Wind strength was recorded as northerly 32 knots, which is almost gale force 8 on the Beaufort scale. My eyes went involuntarily to the porthole, to the vulnerable length of that open tank deck. It wasn't difficult to imagine what it would be like with big seas breaking over the flat side of the ship, flooding the hold with water. As though he guessed what was in my mind, he said, ‘We've very powerful pumps. Last summer we were hove-to for nearly six hours in force ten with a destroyer standing by. It wasn't very comfortable, but we managed.' The Army had apparently acquired the Navy's knack of embellishment by understatement.

The full force of the wind struck us as we cleared the islands of Killegray and Ensay. There was a big swell coming in from the direction of Toe Head, now only a few miles away, and on top of the swell were steep, breaking waves. We were steaming north then, heading straight into it, and the movement was at times quite violent – a crash for'ard as we butted a wave, a shudder and then a lift and a twist as the comber went seething beneath us. Spray was whipped aft as far as the bridge. With Pabbay abeam, we altered course to almost due west, heading direct for Laerg. The motion was different then. We were no longer butting straight into it but steaming across the seas, rolling heavily with the wave crests breaking against the starboard bow. I could see the peak of Chaipaval clear of cloud and standing green against the darker Harris hills; even the camp was visible across a white waste of tumbled water.

It was whilst we were steaming out of the Sound of Harris that Colonel Standing was faced with the difficult choice of yielding to the views of his second-in-command or adhering to the Plan of Operations. Major Braddock saw him in his office shortly after nine and what he advised was the immediate withdrawal of all personnel from Laerg. He based his argument on the weather and he had Major Rafferty with him to support his case. That he had a personal motive for wishing to hasten completion of the evacuation was not, of course, apparent to either Rafferty or Standing.

Briefly his argument was this: The weather had broken and there was a landing craft in difficulties. Even presuming that L4400 was hauled off the beach undamaged, the Squadron Commander at Portsmouth would almost certainly insist on the withdrawal of both ships from Scottish waters. The Army would then have to fall back on the RASC trawler. This vessel was anchored in the Clyde and no longer in commission. It might be a month before it was on station. The alternative would be to charter. Either way it would be expensive, and meantime the detachment on Laerg would have to be supplied by air drop.

Rafferty confirmed that the run-down of supplies on the island had reached the point where the detachment had food and fuel for less than a fortnight at full strength. He also made the point that all but one of the vital radar installations had already been shipped out. There were still four huts standing and a fair amount of equipment, clothing and stores, but the only other items of real value were the bulldozer, two towing vehicles, about a dozen trailers loaded with gear and a Land-Rover. All these could be driven straight on to the beached landing craft in a very short time.

Braddock had been up to the Met. Office that morning and he had with him a weather map drawn for him by Cliff Morgan. It was Cliff's forecast of what the situation would be at midnight. It showed the ‘complex depression' as an intense Low centred over Norway. It showed, too, the belt of high pressure over Greenland as having established itself, a massive High now extending from just west of Iceland to the Labrador coast with pressures of 1040 millibars or more at the centre. And between the High and the Low the isobars narrowed until, just east of Iceland, they were almost touching. Inked arrows indicated a strong northerly air stream.

‘With northerly winds,' Braddock said, ‘both landing craft could beach in safety. It may be our last chance.' And Rafferty had agreed.

If Rafferty had put the case Standing might have accepted it. At least he might have teleprinted Command for authority to act on it. Rafferty had an Irishman's gift for winning people over to his point of view. But faced with Braddock's virtual demand for immediate evacuation, Standing reacted strongly.

‘I have my orders, and so have you, Major Braddock,' he said. ‘Our job is to complete evacuation according to plan.'

‘But the weather … You can't just ignore the weather.' Braddock's voice was impatient, almost angry.

‘All right. But there's no immediate hurry. We've got till this evening. We'll decide the matter then.'

It is always easier to postpone decisions and let events dictate the course of action. But in fairness it must be said that Cliff Morgan, alone of the men immediately concerned at Northton, had the weather constantly under review. It was being drummed into him all the time by the teleprinters – sheet after sheet of pressure figures. By eleven o'clock the picture had clarified to the extent that he was convinced beyond any doubt that his hunch had been right – the Hebrides lay full in the path of a polar air stream of considerable force. The magnitude and intensity of that low pressure area, combined with the Greenland High, would be drawing great masses of air south from the frozen wastes of the polar seas. This cold, dry air would be sliding in under the warmer, more humid air of the low pressure area, cooling and condensing it. Snow at first in the far north, up in the Barents Sea; sleet and rain further south, and in the Hebrides clear skies, or perhaps a film of cloud.

That would be the natural pattern. But before coming on duty that morning Cliff Morgan had reestablished contact with
Arctic Ranger
and
Laird of Brora
. Both trawlers had reported a big swell still running from the north, but the wind backing westerly and the barometric pressure 2 to 3 millibars lower than the weather map indicated in that area. And now the Faeroes were reporting low cloud and rain squalls. What worried him was the original nature of that Low; the result of two depressions merging, it had the inherent weakness of all complex systems. He thought trough lines might be developing, perhaps even some more serious weakness.

Shortly after eleven o'clock he phoned the camp. Colonel Standing was not in his office. It was Mike Ferguson who took the call. He listened to what Cliff had to say and agreed to get Colonel Standing to ring him back. Meantime he passed the information to Major Braddock and it was Braddock who raised it with the Colonel immediately on his return. It is more than likely that he used Cliff Morgan's vague fears – and they were nothing more at that time – to reinforce his own argument. Almost certainly Standing rejected them. As an Air Ministry man, Cliff had no connection with the Army. Standing was under no obligation to accept the local Met. Office's advice or even to consult him. He may well have considered that Braddock was exaggerating. At any rate, he didn't phone Cliff Morgan, deciding instead to wait for the shipping forecast which was by then due in less than two hours.

Quite a number of officers were gathered round the Mess radio at one-forty. The synopsis was much the same as before – gale warnings and the complex low pressure area intensifying to give a northerly air stream for much of the British Isles. The forecast for the Hebrides was no worse than it had been at six forty-five – winds northerly, gale force 8 increasing to 9 later; visibility good but chance of rain squalls.