Ship of Force (2 page)

She lay at anchor in Dunkerque Roads, the approach to the port that had sweltered throughout the day in windless, brilliant sunshine but now with the evening there was a wind from the sea that brought with it the rain. Smith stood in the well of the forty-foot steam pinnace that butted out from between the breakwaters and headed for the ship. She was H.M.S.
Marshall Marmont
and she was a monitor. That is to say she was built to bombard shore installations and so she was shallow-draughted and carried two fifteen-inch guns. She was not so much a ship as a floating gun-platform for those two big guns in their turret which towered ridiculously high on its mounting above her foredeck. Certainly she had no place in an anti-submarine flotilla.

Beyond the sheltering breakwaters of the French port there was a sea running that set the pinnace lifting and plunging. This was
Marshall Marmont’s
pinnace and it was smart enough. The brass on the stubby funnel glittered, and polishing that was a labour of love; the smoke it poured out would leave it foul again within hours. Smith set his feet against the pitching, held on against it and stared at the monitor as he came up on her. She was only one of half-a-dozen monitors anchored in the Roads. Some of the others were twelve-inch gun monitors but there was also
Erebus
that mounted fifteen-inch guns. They lay there along with a scattering of destroyers and drifters, the little fishing craft called into service by the Navy for various duties, but these patrolled the mine-net barrage laid across the Straits. The long line of nets with its electrical mines was supposed to stop U-boats making a passage through the Channel. It had caught very few U-boats and there was no knowing how many had slipped past it or crossed the submerged nets at night, running on the surface.

She was close now.
Marshall Marmont
was short and wide and the bulges built along her sides to give her extra protection against torpedoes made her wider. So she sat wide-hipped in the water. Like an upturned soup-plate, he thought, or with that high turret and the higher bridge and control-top behind it, and her square stern — like a flat-iron. She would sail like one, too. What the hell was Commodore Trist thinking of?

The pinnace slipped in alongside the monitor and hooked on. As Smith topped the ladder the pipes of the bosun’s mates in the sick party shrilled and that was a sign of his achievement, his right to command but it did not cheer him. Then he stepped on to the quarter-deck with his right hand at the salute and saw Garrick returning that salute and fighting down the urge to grin. Then Smith smiled. Garrick was pleased to see Smith; for the moment that was all Garrick cared about and it showed.

Smith’s well-worn bags and valise were brought aboard by the sideboys as Garrick presented
Marshall Marmont’s
officers, drawn up on the quarter-deck. Smith found a word for each of them, studied each face and committed it to memory in those short seconds of talk. Then the officers were dismissed and he stood alone with Garrick and glanced down at Garrick’s sleeve. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir.” Garrick’s part in the Pacific action and Smith’s report on that part had brought Garrick’s promotion and command of
Marshall Marmont
. He said indignantly, “It beats me why you got nothing, sir. It’s a disgrace!”

Smith knew why. The Admiral had told him. “Never mind that.” He got down to business. “What about this ship?”

“She’s a command and I’m grateful, sir.” Garrick meant it.

Smith said dryly, “Don’t be too sure. It’s submarines we’re going after, remember. Besides, I’ve heard some things. I crossed from Dover in a trooper and her master invited me on to bridge. He was good enough to air his knowledge of every ship in the Roads and the harbour. So?”

Garrick hesitated, glum now. “I don’t know what you’ve heard but I’ve learned a lot these last two days. She’s nearly new, not commissioned till 1915 but her engines aren’t up to the job. She’s slow and under-powered so she can barely make headway against some of the strong tides in these waters. Her best speed is six, or maybe seven knots. That’s when her engines are working but they’re —” He paused, choosing his words, then finished “— not very reliable.”

Smith said brutally, “I’ve heard she’s supposed to have spent more time in the dockyard than she has at sea.” He stared out over the darkening sea at the dark port: Dunkerque was blackedout from eight p.m. because of the danger from air-raids. “I’m told they call her H.M.S.
Wildfire
.”

Garrick admitted unhappily, “Yes, sir.”

There was already an H.M.S.
Wildfire
: a ‘stone frigate’, a shore station that was a barracks and gunnery school.

Garrick said, “People from other ships make suggestions like: maybe we should take a tug along whenever we go to sea.” Garrick added bitterly: “Often we do.” He went on: “Or they say the Admiralty have a new artist and he’s coming to paint us; he specialises in still-life.”

Smith grinned lopsidedly. “I suppose it is pretty funny, to them.”

“Maybe. But I blame that for the bad reputation the crew have ashore. The men get fed up and some drunk says a word too much and the fighting starts.”

Smith was silent.
Marshall Marmont
was the ‘flagship’ of the flotilla with which he was to take ‘offensive action’ against Uboats. Her designers may have thought it just conceivable that she would be called upon to fight another ship, but hunt U-boats? No. She was supposed with her big guns to be a central strong point for the rest of his little flotilla. This was his ‘ship of force’!

Garrick asked, “Have you been aboard
Sparrow
?”

Smith was sorry for Garrick. He had got him into this. Left alone, Garrick might have got a destroyer command. Destroyer? Smith’s other ship was
called
a destroyer but — The fact was that back in the 1890s the navies of the world had been building torpedo-boats, fast little craft designed to attack and sink capital ships. Fisher at the Admiralty saw them as a potential threat to the British Fleets of big ships, demanded a vessel to counter them, and the result was the torpedo-boat destroyer, the TBD.
Sparrow
was one of these, one of the earliest ‘destroyers’, launched in 1899. At any high speed and in any bad weather these boats shipped water over the bows but their designers had foreseen this and so they had a curved hump of a foredeck — like a turtle’s back — to shed the water. So they called them ‘turtle backs’. These ships were also sometimes known as ‘thirtyknotters’ because they were designed for a speed of thirty knots. In her trials
Sparrow
just achieved that speed but had rarely done so later. For many years her best had been a bone-shaking twenty-six knots.

Smith said, “I reported to the Commodore and then paid a flying visit to
Sparrow
. I know that she’s called
Bloody Mary
, and why.” Because her crew had an even worse reputation than the monitor’s for brawling ashore and because they were almost entirely Scots.

“‘Bloody Mary, Queen o’ Scots,’” Trist had quoted when Smith reported to him. “Lieutenant Dunbar who commands her has collected a sort of Foreign Legion aboard her, Scots like himself with one or two Irish. You’d be hard put to it to find an Englishman aboard. Dunbar himself guards his tongue but to my mind he borders on dumb insolence. You’ll need to keep a tight hold on him and his crew.”

Afterwards Smith had seen them and found Dunbar closemouthed, obviously weighing up this new Commander.

Garrick said, “I’m afraid most of the brawling is between the crews of this ship and
Sparrow
, sir.”

Smith knew that, too — bad news always got around. He shifted restlessly. “We’ve received sailing orders?”

“Yes, sir. The Commodore has called for all commanding officers at nine.”

“All right. Let’s make a start.” They went down into the pinnace and it headed for the port.

Smith stood with Garrick in the well as the pinnace wound through the anchored shipping. He watched the low silhouette of
Marshall Marmont
recede astern as the pinnace headed for the port. Offensive action? With this — flotilla? It sounded more like a floating zoo with its men at each other’s throats, his destroyer the black sheep of the Dunkerque Squadron and his monitor a lame duck. Garrick said, “One of the ‘M’ monitors left this morning.” He pointed to a line of the ‘M’ class monitors, squat ships, low in the water like
Marshall Marmont
but smaller and mounting twin twelve-inch guns in a turret forward. “She was detached for ‘Special Operations’. That’s all anybody knows.”

Smith nodded absently. He hunched his shoulders against the rain. Special Operations could mean anything…The pinnace ran into the port of Dunkerque, between the breakwaters and up the channel to pass between the bastion and the lighthouse. The French had an underground headquarters in the bastion. Close by was a French seventy-five-millimetre field gun, its wheels on a circular platform on top of a cone-shaped mounting so the trail hung down and the barrel pointed at the sky. The extemporised anti-aircraft gun was there because of air raids; this port needed all the guns it could get. It was bombed by Zeppelins and bombers, shelled by raiding destroyers and bombarded by fifteen-inch guns from behind the German lines in Belgium. It bore the scars. Twenty miles north at Nieuwpoort, the lines of trenches that faced each other across Europe ran down to the sea. In Dunkerque you could hear the mutter of gunfire that never stopped. At night the glow of the firing lit the distant sky.

The Trystram lock lay to starboard and its gates were open to admit a Coastal Motor Boat to the basin beyond. The CMBs were berthed in there and the Commander surely couldn’t be happy about it; he would want them outside where they would not have to pass through a lock to get to sea. The CMB entering was one of the newer fifty-five-foot boats. Her ensign drooped at the yard because she was hardly moving as she slipped into the lock. But Smith knew these boats were capable of speeds up to forty knots and were the fastest vessels afloat. He could see the two torpedo chutes, not tubes, in the stern from which she fired her torpedoes. With her rounded hull curving inboard to form her deck and make her nearly a cylinder in shape she looked a bit like a torpedo herself, slim, fast, deadly. As she entered the lock someone flashed a light briefly from the quay above, showing the boat’s commander where he stood in the cockpit at the wheel. He was a very young man of course, probably a Sub-Lieutenant. Coastal Motor Boats were a very young man’s game. His oilskin glistened black with rain and spray and his face turned up to the yellow light was drawn. The light snapped out then and the CMB was lost in the gloom of the lock.

Marshall Marmont’s
pinnace thrust on up the length of the basin of the Port d’Echouage, past a tug and then the destroyers tied up at the quay to starboard, of which
Sparrow
was one. To port was the shipyard. At the head of the Port d’Echouage the way came off the pinnace as the engine slowed and she turned to slip in alongside the steps. Close by was the lock de la Citadelle that led to the basin where the French destroyers were berthed but right above was the quay where the fish market was held and its smell lingered.

Smith, by virtue of rank, was first out of the pinnace but then Garrick came up and they started to walk along the edge of the quay.

They headed for the Parc de la Marine and Trist’s headquarters, walking quickly. On their left was the old seamen’s quarter and as the doors of bars and cafes opened and closed they let out a murmur of sound and shafts of light, but for most of the time they were closed and the quayside lay dark and silent. There were gaps in the houses that made up the streets running back from the quay, marking where bombs had fallen. High above the town stood the Belfroi tower where the French had an observation post to watch for enemy aircraft or ships. But while they could warn of raiders, a lot still got through the guns and the fighters.

Smith walked in brooding silence. Garrick would be wondering about Smith’s plans for the flotilla and the bitter truth was that he had none. Not for a creeping monitor and an ancient torpedo-boat destroyer. He knew Trist had plans for them.

But Garrick asked, “This business of offensive action against U-boats, sir. What do you think about it?”

Smith told him.

* * *

Behind them in the Port d’Echouage the tug
Lively Lady
was snugged-in against the quay across from the shipyard and only fifty yards from
Sparrow
. Victoria Sevastopol Baines woke in her tiny cabin aboard the tug and lay for some minutes staring up at the deckhead. She thought it needed a lick of paint and she’d tell George, the tug’s master, about it. She believed in keeping the crew of the
Lively Lady
on their toes. The devil found work for idle hands. She lay still but not idle, planning work for those hands. Besides, she was long past the age for leaping out of bed.

Victoria’s middle name gave the clue to her years; she had been born as the news of the fall of Sevastopol reached England. At the age of sixty-one she preferred to let waking take its time. At the same time, normally she disapproved of sleeping during the day as being a foreign habit. This day, however, she felt justified because the
Lively Lady
had orders to sail that night so she thought this little sleep was like the wise virgins tending their lamps. Well, the virgin part wasn’t to be taken literally. There had, after all, been Captain Baines and the Captain had been a full-blooded man: she had borne him four sons. He had also been master and owner of the tug
Lively Lady
so his widow owned her now — and commanded her. Strictly the tug came under the orders of the Royal Navy and strictly she was commanded by her master, George, because he was Royal Naval Reserve and had a master’s ticket. But Victoria who had no ticket at all, refused to accept such red tape. She commanded the tug and George and the Navy accepted it. Early in the war she had been outspoken about an officer’s seamanship and he threatened to have her sent ashore. She had bawled at him from leather lungs: “
Ashore
? Put
me
ashore?
I’ll
write to
The Times
about
you
, my lad! Tear a widow woman from her only means of livelihood and throw her on the streets? A woman that’s trying to serve King and country and has four boys at sea this minute!” That was how she started. He heard a lot more but not the end because he wisely hauled clear before then.