San Andreas

‘And don’t forget me,’ Sister Morrison said coldly. ‘I’m half German.’

‘You are? With a name like Margaret Morrison?’

She pursed her lips, an exercise which seemed to come naturally to her. ‘How do you know that my name is Margaret?’

‘A captain holds the crew lists. Like it or not, you are a member of the crew. Not that any of this matters. Spies, saboteurs, can be of any nationality and the more unlikely they are—in this case being British—the more efficiently they can operate. As I say, that’s at the moment irrelevant. What is relevant is that the Bo’sun and two of his men will be here very shortly. Should an emergency arise he will assume complete charge except, of course, for the handling of the very ill. I assume you all know the Bo’sun?’

‘An admirable man,’ Dr Singh said. ‘Very reassuring, very competent, couldn’t imagine anyone I’d rather have around in times of need.’

‘We all know him.’ Sister Morrison was as good with her cold tones as she was with her pursed lips. ‘Heaven knows he’s here often enough.’

‘Visiting the sick?’

‘Visiting the sick! I don’t like the idea of an ordinary seaman pestering one of my nurses.’

‘Mr McKinnon is not an ordinary seaman. He’s an extraordinary seaman and he’s never pestered anyone in his life. Let’s have Janet along here to see if she bears out your preposterous allegations.’

‘You—you know her name.’

‘Of course I know her name.’ Bowen sounded weary. It was not the moment, he thought, to mention the fact that until five minutes ago he had never heard of anyone called Janet. ‘They come from the same island and have much to talk about. It would help, Miss Morrison, if you took as much interest in your staff as I do in mine.’

It was a good exit line, Bowen thought, but he wasn’t particularly proud of himself. In spite of the way she spoke he rather liked the girl because he suspected that the image she projected was not the real one and that there might be some very good reason for this: but she was not Archie McKinnon.

The Chief Officer, one Geraint Kennet, an unusual name but one that he maintained came from an ancient aristocratic lineage, was awaiting Bowen’s arrival on the bridge. Kennet was a Welshman, lean of figure and of countenance, very dark and very irreverent.

‘You are lost, Mr Kennet?’ Bowen said. Bowen had long ago abandoned the old habit of addressing a Chief Officer as ‘Mister’.

‘When the hour strikes, sir, Kennet is there. I hear of alarms and excursions from young Jamie here.’ ‘Young Jamie’ was Third Officer Batesman. ‘Something sinister afoot, I gather.’

‘You gather rightly. Just how sinister I don’t know.’ He described what little had happened. ‘So, two electrical breakdowns, if you could call them that, and a third in the process of being investigated.’

‘And it would be naïve to think that the third is not connected with the other two?’

‘Very naïve.’

‘This presages something ominous.’

‘Don’t they teach you English in those Welsh schools.’

‘No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. You have reached a conclusion, not, perhaps, a very nice one?’

The phone rang. Batesman took it and handed the phone to Bowen who listened briefly, thanked the caller and hung up.

‘Jamieson. In the cold room, this time. How could anyone get into the cold room? Cook’s got the only key.’

‘Easily,’ Kennet said. ‘If a man was a saboteur, trained in his art—if that’s the word I want—one would expect him to be an expert picklock or at least to carry a set of skeleton keys around with him. With respect, sir, I hardly think that’s the point. When will this villain strike again?’

‘When indeed. Flannelfoot—that’s Jamieson’s term for him—seems to be a villain of some resource and foresight. It is more than likely that he has some further surprises. Jamieson is of the same mind. If there’s another power failure when they switch on again he says he’s going to go over every inch of wiring with his bridge-megger, whatever that is.’

‘Some sort of instrument for detecting voltage leaks—you know, breaks in a circuit. It’s occurred to me—’

Chief Radio Officer Spenser appeared at the hatchway of his wireless office, paper in hand. ‘Message from the Andover, sir.’

Bowen read out: ‘Continued absence of lights very serious. Essential expedite matters. Has saboteur been apprehended?’

Kennet said: ‘Cue, I think for angry spluttering.’

‘Man’s a fool,’ Bowen said. ‘Commander Warrington, I mean, captain of the frigate. Spenser, send: “If you have any members of the Special Branch or CID with you they are welcome aboard. If not, kindly refrain from sending pointless signals. What the hell do you think we’re trying to do?” ’

Kennet said: ‘In the circumstances, sir, a very restrained signal. As I was about to say—’

The phone rang again. Batesman took the call, listened, acknowledged, hung up and turned to the Captain.

‘Engine-room, sir. Another malfunction. Both Jamieson and Third Engineer Ralson are on their way up with meggers.’

Bowen brought out his pipe and said nothing. He gave the impression of a man temporarily bereft of words. Kennet wasn’t, but then, Kennet never was.

‘Man never gets to finish a sentence on this bridge. Have you arrived at any conclusion, sir, however unpleasant?’

‘Conclusion, no. Hunch, suspicion, yes. Unpleasant, yes. I would take odds that by or at dawn someone is going to have a go at us.’

‘Fortunately,’ Kennet said, ‘I am not a betting man. In any event I wouldn’t bet against my own convictions. Which are the same as yours, sir.’

‘We’re a hospital ship, sir,’ Batesman said. He didn’t even sound hopeful.

Bowen favoured him with a morose glance. ‘If you are immune to the sufferings of the sick and dying and care to exercise a certain cold-blooded and twisted logic, then we are a man-of-war even though we are completely defenceless. For what do we do? We take our sick and wounded home, fix them up and send them off again to the front or to the sea to fight the Germans once more. If you were to stretch your conscience far enough you could make a good case out of maintaining that to allow a hospital ship to reach its homeland is tantamount to aiding and abetting the enemy. Oberleutnant Lemp would have torpedoed us without a second thought.’

‘Oberleutnant who?’

‘Lemp. Chap who sent the Athenia to the bottom—and Lemp knew that the Athenia carried only civilians as passengers, men, women and children who—he knew this well—would never be used to fight against the Germans. The Athenia was a case much more deserving of compassion than we are, don’t you think, Third?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, sir.’ Batesman was now not only as morose as the Captain had been, but positively mournful. ‘How do we know that this fellow Lemp is not lurking out there, just over the horizon?’

‘Fear not,’ Kennet said. ‘Oberleutnant Lemp has long since been gathered to his ancestors, for whom one can feel only a certain degree of sympathy. However, he may have a twin brother or some kindred souls out there. As the Captain so rightly infers, we live in troubled and uncertain times.’

Batesman looked at Bowen. ‘Is it permitted, Captain, to ask the Chief Officer to shut up?’

Kennet smiled broadly, then stopped smiling as the phone rang again. Batesman reached for the phone but Bowen forestalled him. ‘Master’s privilege, Third. The news may be too heavy for a young man like you to bear.’ He listened, cursed by way of acknowledgment and hung up. When he turned round he looked—and sounded—disgusted.

‘Bloody officers’ toilet!’

Kennet said, ‘Flannelfoot?’

‘Who do you think it was? Santa Claus?’

‘A sound choice,’ Kennet said judiciously. ‘Very sound. Where else could a man work in such peace, privacy and for an undetermined period of time, blissfully immune, one might say, from any fear of interruption? Might even have time to read a chapter of his favourite thriller, as is the habit of one young officer aboard this ship, who shall remain nameless.’

‘The Third Officer has the right of it,’ Bowen said. ‘Will you kindly shut up?’

‘Yes, sir. Was that Jamieson?’

‘Yes.’

‘We should be hearing from Ralson any time now.’

‘Jamieson has already heard from him. Seamen’s toilet this time, port side.’

For once, Kennet had no observation to make and for almost a minute there was silence on the bridge for the sufficient reason that there didn’t seem to be any comment worth making. When the silence was broken it was, inevitably, by Kennet.

‘A few more minutes and our worthy engineers might as well cease and desist. Or am I the only person who has noticed that the dawn is in the sky?’

The dawn, indeed, was in the sky. Already, to the south-east, off the port beam, the sky had changed from black, or as black as it ever becomes in northern waters, to a dark grey and was steadily lightening. The snow had completely stopped now, the wind had dropped to twenty knots and the San Andreas was pitching, not heavily, in the head seas coming up from the northwest.

Kennet said, ‘Shall I post a couple of extra lookouts, sir? One on either wing?’

‘And what can those look-outs do? Make faces at the enemy?’

‘They can’t do a great deal more, and that’s a fact. But if anyone is going to have a go at us, it’s going to be now. A high-flying Condor, for instance, you can almost see the bombs leaving the bay and there’s an even chance in evasive action.’ Kennet didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic or convinced.

‘And if it’s a submarine, dive-bomber, glider-bomber or torpedo-bomber?’

‘They can still give us warning and time for a prayer. Mind you, probably a very short prayer, but still a prayer.’

‘As you wish, Mr Kennet.’

Kennet made a call and within three minutes his look-outs arrived on the bridge, duffel-coated and scarfed to the eyebrows as Kennet had instructed. McGuigan and Jones, a Southern Irishman and a Welshman, they were boys only, neither of them a day over eighteen. Kennet issued them with binoculars and posted them on the bridge wings, Jones to port, McGuigan to starboard. Seconds only after closing the port door, Jones opened it again.

‘Ship, sir! Port quarter.’ His voice was excited, urgent. ‘Warship, I think.’

‘Relax,’ Kennet said. ‘I doubt whether it’s the Tirpitz.’ Less than half a dozen people aboard knew that the Andover had accompanied them during the night. He stepped out on to the wing and returned almost immediately. ‘The good shepherd,’ he said. ‘Three miles.’

‘It’s almost half-light now,’ Captain Bowen said. ‘We could be wrong, Mr Kennet.’

The radio room hatchway panel banged open and Spenser’s face appeared.

‘Andover, sir. Bandit, bandit, one bandit…045…ten miles…five thousand.’

‘There now,’ Kennet said. ‘I knew we weren’t wrong. Full power, sir?’ Bowen nodded and Kennet gave the necessary instructions to the engine-room.

‘Evasive action?’ Bowen was half-smiling; knowledge, however unwelcome that knowledge, always comes as a relief after uncertainty. ‘A Condor, you would guess?’

‘No guess, sir. In those waters, only the Condor flies alone.’ Kennet slid back the port wing door and gazed skywards. ‘Cloud cover’s pretty thin now. We should be able to see our friend coming up—he should be practically dead astern. Shall we go out on the wing, sir?’

‘In a minute, Mr Kennet. Two minutes. Gather flowers while we may—or, at least, keep warm as long as possible. If fate has abandoned us we shall be freezing to death all too soon. Tell me, Mr Kennet, has any profound thought occurred to you?’

‘A lot of thoughts have occurred to me but I wouldn’t say any of them are profound.’

‘How on earth do you think that Condor located us?’

‘Submarine? It could have surfaced and radioed Alta Fjord.’

‘No submarine. The Andover’s sonar would have picked him up. No plane, no surface ships, that’s a certainty.’

Kennet frowned for a few seconds, then smiled. ‘Flannel-foot,’ he said with certainty. ‘A radio.’

‘Not necessarily even that. A small electrical device, probably powered by our own mains system, that transmits a continuous homing signal.’

‘So if we survive this lot it’s out with the fine-tooth comb?’

‘Indeed. It’s out with—’

‘Andover, sir.’ It was Spenser again. ‘Four bandits, repeat four bandits…310…eight miles…three thousand.’

‘I wonder what we’ve done to deserve this?’ Kennet sounded almost mournful. ‘We were even more right than we thought, sir. Torpedo-bombers or glider-bombers, that’s for sure, attacking out of the darkness to the north-west and us silhouetted against the dawn.’

The two men moved out on the port wing. The Andover was still on the port quarter but had closed in until it was less than two miles distant. A low bank of cloud, at about the same distance, obscured the view aft.

‘Hear anything, Mr Kennet? See anything?’

‘Nothing, nothing. Damn that cloud. Yes, I do. I hear it. It’s a Condor.’

‘It’s a Condor.’ Once heard, the desynchronized clamour of a Focke-Wulf 200’s engine is not readily forgotten. ‘And I’m afraid, Mr Kennet, that you’ll have to postpone your evasive action practice for another time. This lad sounds as if he is coming in very low.’

‘Yes, he’s coming in low. And I know why.’ Most unusually for Kennet, he sounded very bitter. ‘He intends to do some pinpoint precision bombing. He’s under orders to stop us or cripple us but not sink us. I’ll bet that bastard Flannelfoot feels as safe as houses.’

‘You have it to rights, Mr Kennet. He could stop us by bombing the engine-room, but doing that is a practical guarantee that we go to the bottom. There he comes, now.’ The Focke-Wulf Condor had broken through the cloud and was heading directly for the stern of the San Andreas. Every gun on the Andover that could be brought to bear had opened up as soon as the Focke-Wulf had cleared the cloud-bank and within seconds the starboard side of the Andover was wreathed in smoke. For a frigate, its anti-aircraft fire-power was formidable: low-angle main armament, pom-poms, Oerlikons and the equally deadly Boulton-Paul Defiant turrets which loosed off a devastating 960 rounds a minute. The Focke-Wulf must have been hit many times but the big Condor’s capacity to absorb punishment was legendary. Still it came on, now no more than two hundred feet above the waves. The sound of the engines had risen from the clamorous to the thunderous.

‘This is no place for a couple of honest seamen to be, Mr Kennet.’ Captain Bowen had to shout to make himself heard. ‘But I think it’s too late now.’

‘I rather think it is, sir.’

Two bombs, just two, arced lazily down from the now smoking Condor.

TWO

Had the Americans retained the original British design concept for accommodation aboard the Liberty Ships, the tragedy, while still remaining such, would at least have been minimized. The original Sunderland plans had the accommodation both fore and aft: Henry Kaiser’s designers, in their wisdom—blind folly as it turned out—had all their accommodation, for both officers and men, including also the navigating bridge, grouped in a single superstructure surrounding the funnel.

The Bo’sun, Dr Sinclair by his side, had reached the upper deck before the Condor reached the San Andreas; they were almost immediately joined by Patterson for whom the Andover’s barrage had sounded like a series of heavy metallic blows on the side of his engine-room.

‘Down!’ the Bo’sun shouted. Two powerful arms around their shoulders bore them to the deck, for the Focke-Wulf had reached the San Andreas before the bombs did and the Bo’sun was well aware that the Focke-Wulf carried a fairly lethal array of machine guns which it did not hesitate to use when the occasion demanded. On this occasion, however, the guns remained silent, possibly because the gunners were under instructions not to fire, more probably because the gunners were already dead, for it was plain that the Condor, trailing a huge plume of black smoke, whether from fuselage or engines it was impossible to say, and veering sharply to starboard, was itself about to die.

The two bombs, contact and not armour-piercing, struck fore and aft of the funnel, exploded simultaneously and just immediately after passing through the unprotected deck-heads of the living quarters, blowing the shattered bulkheads outwards and filling the air with screaming shards of metal and broken glass, none of which reached the three prone men. The Bo’sun cautiously lifted his head and stared in disbelief as the funnel, seemingly intact but sheared off at its base toppled slowly over the port side and into the sea. Any sound of a splash that there may have been was drowned out by the swelling roar of more aero engines.

‘Stay down, stay down!’ Flat on the deck, the Bo’sun twisted his head to the right. There were four of them in line abreast formation, Heinkel torpedo-bombers, half a mile away, no more than twenty feet above the water and headed directly for the starboard side of the San Andreas. Ten seconds, he thought, twelve at the most and the dead men in the charnel house of that shattered superstructure would have company and to spare. Why had the guns of the Andover fallen silent? He twisted his head to the left to look at the frigate and immediately realized why. It was impossible that the gunners on the Andover could not hear the sound of the approaching Heinkels but it was equally impossible that they could see them. The San Andreas was directly in line between the frigate and the approaching bombers which were flying below the height of their upper deck.

He twisted his head to the right again and to his momentary astonishment saw that this was no longer the case. The Heinkels were lifting clear of the water with the intention of flying over the San Andreas, which they did seconds later, not much more than ten feet above the deck, two on each side of the twisted superstructure. The San Andreas had not been the target, only the shield for the Heinkels: the frigate was the target and the bombers were half way between the San Andreas and the frigate before the bemused defenders aboard the Andover understood what was happening.

When they did understand their reaction was sharp and violent. The main armament was virtually useless. It takes time to train and elevate a gun of any size and against a close-in and fast-moving target there just isn’t time. The anti-aircraft guns, the two-pounders, the Oerlikons and the Defiants did indeed mount a heavy barrage but torpedo-bombers were notoriously difficult targets, not least because the gunners were acutely aware that death was only seconds away, a realization that made for less than a controlled degree of accuracy.

The bombers were less than three hundred yards away when the plane on the left-hand side of the formation pulled up and banked to its left to clear the stern of the Andover: almost certainly neither the plane nor the pilot had been damaged: as was not unknown, the torpedo release mechanism had iced up, freezing the torpedo in place. At about the same instant the plane on the right descended in a shallow dive until it touched the water—almost certainly the pilot had been shot. A victory but a Pyrrhic one. The other two Heinkels released their torpedoes and lifted clear of the Andover.

Three torpedoes hit the Andover almost simultaneously, the two that had been cleanly released and the one that was still attached to the plane that had crashed into the water. All three torpedoes detonated but there was little enough in the way of thunderclaps of sound or shock waves: water always has this same muffling effect on an underwater explosion. What they did produce, however, was a great sheet of water and spray which rose to two hundred feet into the sky and then slowly subsided. When it finally disappeared the Andover was on its beam ends and deep in the water. Within twenty seconds, with only a faint hissing as the water flooded the engine-room and with curiously little in the way of bubbles, the Andover slid beneath the surface of the sea.

‘My God, my God, my God!’ Dr Sinclair, swaying slightly, was on his feet. As a doctor, he was acquainted with death, but not in this shocking form: he was still dazed, not quite aware of what was going on around him. ‘Good God, that big plane is coming back again!’

The big plane, the Condor, was indeed coming back again, but it offered no threat to them. Dense smoke pouring from all four engines, it completed a half circle and was approaching the San Andreas. Less than half a mile away it touched the surface of the sea, momentarily dipped beneath it, then came into sight again. There was no more smoke.

‘God rest them,’ Patterson said. He was almost abnormally calm. ‘Damage control party first, see if we’re making water, although I shouldn’t have thought so.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The Bo’sun looked at what was left of the superstructure. ‘Perhaps a fire-control party. Lots of blankets, mattresses, clothes, papers in there—God only knows what’s smouldering away already.’

‘Do you think there will be any survivors in there?’

‘I wouldn’t even guess, sir. If there are, thank heavens we’re a hospital ship.’

Patterson turned to Dr Sinclair and shook him gently. ‘Doctor, we need your help.’ He nodded towards the superstructure. ‘You and Dr Singh—and the ward orderlies. I’ll send some men with sledges and crowbars.’

‘An oxy-acetylene torch?’ said the Bo’sun.

‘Of course.’

‘We’ve got enough medical equipment and stores aboard to equip a small town hospital,’ Sinclair said. ‘If there are any survivors all we’ll require is a few hypodermic syringes.’ He seemed back on balance again. ‘We don’t take in the nurses?’

‘Good God, no.’ Patterson shook his head vehemently. ‘I tell you, I wouldn’t like to go in there. If there are any survivors they’ll have their share of horrors later.’

McKinnon said: ‘Permission to take away the lifeboat, sir?’

‘Whatever for?’

‘There could be survivors from the Andover.’

‘Survivors! She went down in thirty seconds.’

‘The Hood blew apart in one second. There were three survivors.’

‘Of course, of course. I’m not a seaman, Bo’sun. You don’t need permission from me.’

‘Yes, I do, sir.’ The Bo’sun gestured towards the superstructure. ‘All the deck officers are there. You’re in command.’

‘Good God!’ The thought, the realization had never struck Patterson. ‘What a way to assume command!’

‘And speaking of command, sir, the San Andreas is no longer under command. She’s slewing rapidly to port. Steering mechanism on the bridge must have been wrecked.’

‘Steering can wait. I’ll stop the engines.’

Three minutes later the Bo’sun eased the throttle and edged the lifeboat towards an inflatable life raft which was roller-coasting heavily near the spot where the now vanished Condor had been. There were only two men in the raft—the rest of the aircrew, the Bo’sun assumed, had gone to the bottom with the Focke-Wulf. They had probably been dead anyway. One of the men, no more than a youngster, very seasick and looking highly apprehensive—he had every right, the Bo’sun thought, to be apprehensive—was sitting upright and clinging to a lifeline. The other lay on his back in the bottom of the raft: in the regions of his left upper chest, left upper arm and right thigh his flying overalls were saturated with blood. His eyes were closed.

‘Jesus’ sake!’ Able Seaman Ferguson, who had a powerful Liverpool accent and whose scarred face spoke eloquently of battles lost and won, mainly in bar-rooms, looked at the Bo’sun with a mixture of disbelief and outrage. ‘Jesus, Bo’sun, you’re not going to pick those bastards up? They just tried to send us to the bottom. Us! A hospital ship!’