Read Online HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) by Nicholas Monsarrat - Free Book Online
Authors: Nicholas Monsarrat
Tags: WWII/Navel/Fiction
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burial of his men. It was while he was adding the nineteen names and ratings that he noticed it was morning of New Year’s Day.
Chapter Three
All that day they lay there, the ship’s only motion a sluggish rolling. But within her the movement and the noises were cheerful. The ditching of ‘A’ gun barrels and the greater part of the mounting was easy: the breaking and moving of the anchor cables a long-drawn-out effort which lasted well after dark. But the cables, hauled in sections along the upper deck and stowed right aft among the depth charges, made an appreciable difference to their trim: so did the jettisoned windlass, which disappeared overboard bit by bit, as in some mysterious conjuring trick. (It was too heavy and unwieldy to move aft.) But the pumping out of the forepeak (the triangular section which makes the bows) was the most successful of all. It acted as a buoyancy chamber where it could exert the most leverage, and it brought the bows up cheerfully. Altogether, by the time the programme was fulfilled, the draught forrard had improved to twenty-four feet, and the screws aft were deep enough to get a firm grip of the water. Of course, she would steer like a mongrel waving its tail: but that wouldn’t matter. There was no one watching.
One curious accident attended the lightening process. As Marlborough ’s draught forrard began to alter decisively, two bodies, released by some chance movement of the hull, floated out from the hole in the port side. They drifted away before they could be recovered: they were both badly burned, and both sprawling in relaxed, ungainly attitudes as though glad to be quit of their burden. The Captain, looking down from the bridge, watched them with absorbed attention, obsessed by the fancy that they were a first instalment of the sacrifice which must be paid before the ship got under way. He heard a rating on the fo’c’sle say: ‘That second one was Fletcher – poor bastard,’ and he felt angry at the curt epitaph, as if its informality might somehow weaken the magic. He could not remember having had thoughts like that since he was a small boy. Perhaps it was the beginnings of feeling really tired.
For him it had been a long day, and now at dusk, with the prospect of another night of drifting, he felt impatient to put things to the test. He had been all over the ship again: he had seen the midshipman and two ratings who were also dying: he had looked at the radio set (from which the leading tel. had at last stood back and said: ‘It’s no good sir – there’s too much smashed’), he had made a third examination of the bulkhead, where they had been able to insert another shore and a felt-and-tallow patch, to take up the slack as the pressure on it relaxed. He had directed the work on the cables, Adams being busy on ‘A’ gun. Now he had nothing to do but wait for Chief’s report from the engine room: the hardest part of all. He had the sky to watch, and the barometer, low but steady; and that was all. The main ordeal still lay ahead.
It was nine o’clock in the evening before the Engineer Officer came up with his report: the Captain was sitting in the deserted wardroom aft, eating the corned beef hash which was now their staple diet and remembering other parties which this room had witnessed, when there were eight of them, with Number One’s wife and Guns’ fiancée and one of the Mid’s colourful young women to cheer them. Now the dead men and the mourning women outnumbered the living: no charm, no laughter could enliven any of the absent … Impatiently he ground a half-smoked cigarette into his plate, cursing these ridiculous thoughts and fancies, unlike any he could remember, which were beginning to crowd in on him. There was no time to spare for such irrelevancies: he had one supreme task to concentrate on, and anything else was a drain on energy and attention alike.
Chief came in, shedding a pair of oily gauntlets, looking down apologetically at his
Chapter Three
All that day they lay there, the ship’s only motion a sluggish rolling. But within her the movement and the noises were cheerful. The ditching of ‘A’ gun barrels and the greater part of the mounting was easy: the breaking and moving of the anchor cables a long-drawn-out effort which lasted well after dark. But the cables, hauled in sections along the upper deck and stowed right aft among the depth charges, made an appreciable difference to their trim: so did the jettisoned windlass, which disappeared overboard bit by bit, as in some mysterious conjuring trick. (It was too heavy and unwieldy to move aft.) But the pumping out of the forepeak (the triangular section which makes the bows) was the most successful of all. It acted as a buoyancy chamber where it could exert the most leverage, and it brought the bows up cheerfully. Altogether, by the time the programme was fulfilled, the draught forrard had improved to twenty-four feet, and the screws aft were deep enough to get a firm grip of the water. Of course, she would steer like a mongrel waving its tail: but that wouldn’t matter. There was no one watching.
One curious accident attended the lightening process. As Marlborough ’s draught forrard began to alter decisively, two bodies, released by some chance movement of the hull, floated out from the hole in the port side. They drifted away before they could be recovered: they were both badly burned, and both sprawling in relaxed, ungainly attitudes as though glad to be quit of their burden. The Captain, looking down from the bridge, watched them with absorbed attention, obsessed by the fancy that they were a first instalment of the sacrifice which must be paid before the ship got under way. He heard a rating on the fo’c’sle say: ‘That second one was Fletcher – poor bastard,’ and he felt angry at the curt epitaph, as if its informality might somehow weaken the magic. He could not remember having had thoughts like that since he was a small boy. Perhaps it was the beginnings of feeling really tired.
For him it had been a long day, and now at dusk, with the prospect of another night of drifting, he felt impatient to put things to the test. He had been all over the ship again: he had seen the midshipman and two ratings who were also dying: he had looked at the radio set (from which the leading tel. had at last stood back and said: ‘It’s no good sir – there’s too much smashed’), he had made a third examination of the bulkhead, where they had been able to insert another shore and a felt-and-tallow patch, to take up the slack as the pressure on it relaxed. He had directed the work on the cables, Adams being busy on ‘A’ gun. Now he had nothing to do but wait for Chief’s report from the engine room: the hardest part of all. He had the sky to watch, and the barometer, low but steady; and that was all. The main ordeal still lay ahead.
It was nine o’clock in the evening before the Engineer Officer came up with his report: the Captain was sitting in the deserted wardroom aft, eating the corned beef hash which was now their staple diet and remembering other parties which this room had witnessed, when there were eight of them, with Number One’s wife and Guns’ fiancée and one of the Mid’s colourful young women to cheer them. Now the dead men and the mourning women outnumbered the living: no charm, no laughter could enliven any of the absent … Impatiently he ground a half-smoked cigarette into his plate, cursing these ridiculous thoughts and fancies, unlike any he could remember, which were beginning to crowd in on him. There was no time to spare for such irrelevancies: he had one supreme task to concentrate on, and anything else was a drain on energy and attention alike.
Chief came in, shedding a pair of oily gauntlets, looking down apologetically at his
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