Read Online HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) by Nicholas Monsarrat - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Nicholas Monsarrat
Tags: WWII/Navel/Fiction
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and they would be able to send tugs to bring them the rest of the way home. Stornoway – 300 miles. Say three knots. A hundred hours. Four days. Good enough.
Now for the course. The magnetic course, it must be: the master gyro-compass had been wrecked, and they would have to depend on the magnetic compasses, trusting that the explosion and the shifting of ballast had not put them out. South-east would do it. South-east for four days. Butt of Lewis was a good mark for them (he checked it on the chart): a flashing light, visible fourteen miles. That would bring them in all right. And what a landfall ...
When he finally laid down his pencil he was still in the same state of exaltation as had possessed him when he saw the lights come on. The desire to sleep had vanished: impelled to some sort of activity, he left the shelter of the asdic hut and began to pace up and down outside. By God, once they got going there would be no stopping them … What did four days matter? – they could keep going for four weeks if it meant Marlborough making harbour in the end. There was no depression now, no morbid brooding about sacrifices or the cost in men. It was Marlborough against the sea and the enemy, and tomorrow would see her cheating them both. He looked up at the sky, clear and frosty: a night for action, for steering small, for laughing and killing at the same time. The first night of 1943. And tomorrow they would sail into the new year like a prizefighter going in for the finish. Nothing was going to stop them now.
Midday found them still drifting, still powerless. A succession of minor breakdowns involving in turn the fans and the steering engine held up everything during the morning: at noon a defect in one of the oil pumps led to more delay. The suspended activity, the anticlimax after the first rush of feeling, was a severe test of patience: it was with difficulty that the Captain, walking the upper deck, managed to exhibit a normal confidence. Part of the morning was taken up with the burying of two more men who had died during the night, but for the remainder he had little to occupy him; and as the afternoon advanced and the light declined, a dull stupor, matching his own indolence, seemed to envelop the ship. Stricken with the curse of immobility, she accepted the dusk as if it were all that her languor deserved.
Then, as swiftly as that first torpedo strike, the good news came. Chief, presenting himself in the wardroom with a cheerful grin announced that his repairs were complete: he used the classic formula, ‘Ready to proceed, sir!’ and he seemed to shed ten years in saying it. The Captain got up slowly, smiling in answer.
‘Thank you, Chief … A remarkable effort.’
‘We’re all touching wood, sir.’ But he was almost boyish in his good humour.
‘I want to start very gently. Twenty or thirty revs, not more. Will you put a reliable hand on the bulkhead?’
‘I’ll go myself, sir. The Chief ERA can take charge in the engine room.’
‘All right.’ The Captain raised his voice. ‘Pantry!’
The leading steward appeared.
‘Ask Petty Officer Adams to come up to the bridge.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘I’ll just ring “Slow ahead” when I’m ready, Chief. We can do the rest by voice-pipe. If you hear anything at all from the bulkhead, stop engine straight away, of your own accord.’
Within a minute or so he was on the bridge, the signalman by his side, Adams in the wheelhouse below. Leaning across the faintly lit compass he called down the voice-pipe: ‘How’s her head down there?’
‘South, eighty west, sir.’
The two compasses were in agreement. ‘Right … Our course is south-east, Adams. Bring her round very slowly when we begin to move.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Adams’s voice, like the signalman’s hard breathing at his elbow, reflected the tension that was binding them all.
The Captain took a deep breath. ‘Slow ahead starboard.’
‘Slow ahead starboard, sir.’
The
Now for the course. The magnetic course, it must be: the master gyro-compass had been wrecked, and they would have to depend on the magnetic compasses, trusting that the explosion and the shifting of ballast had not put them out. South-east would do it. South-east for four days. Butt of Lewis was a good mark for them (he checked it on the chart): a flashing light, visible fourteen miles. That would bring them in all right. And what a landfall ...
When he finally laid down his pencil he was still in the same state of exaltation as had possessed him when he saw the lights come on. The desire to sleep had vanished: impelled to some sort of activity, he left the shelter of the asdic hut and began to pace up and down outside. By God, once they got going there would be no stopping them … What did four days matter? – they could keep going for four weeks if it meant Marlborough making harbour in the end. There was no depression now, no morbid brooding about sacrifices or the cost in men. It was Marlborough against the sea and the enemy, and tomorrow would see her cheating them both. He looked up at the sky, clear and frosty: a night for action, for steering small, for laughing and killing at the same time. The first night of 1943. And tomorrow they would sail into the new year like a prizefighter going in for the finish. Nothing was going to stop them now.
Midday found them still drifting, still powerless. A succession of minor breakdowns involving in turn the fans and the steering engine held up everything during the morning: at noon a defect in one of the oil pumps led to more delay. The suspended activity, the anticlimax after the first rush of feeling, was a severe test of patience: it was with difficulty that the Captain, walking the upper deck, managed to exhibit a normal confidence. Part of the morning was taken up with the burying of two more men who had died during the night, but for the remainder he had little to occupy him; and as the afternoon advanced and the light declined, a dull stupor, matching his own indolence, seemed to envelop the ship. Stricken with the curse of immobility, she accepted the dusk as if it were all that her languor deserved.
Then, as swiftly as that first torpedo strike, the good news came. Chief, presenting himself in the wardroom with a cheerful grin announced that his repairs were complete: he used the classic formula, ‘Ready to proceed, sir!’ and he seemed to shed ten years in saying it. The Captain got up slowly, smiling in answer.
‘Thank you, Chief … A remarkable effort.’
‘We’re all touching wood, sir.’ But he was almost boyish in his good humour.
‘I want to start very gently. Twenty or thirty revs, not more. Will you put a reliable hand on the bulkhead?’
‘I’ll go myself, sir. The Chief ERA can take charge in the engine room.’
‘All right.’ The Captain raised his voice. ‘Pantry!’
The leading steward appeared.
‘Ask Petty Officer Adams to come up to the bridge.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘I’ll just ring “Slow ahead” when I’m ready, Chief. We can do the rest by voice-pipe. If you hear anything at all from the bulkhead, stop engine straight away, of your own accord.’
Within a minute or so he was on the bridge, the signalman by his side, Adams in the wheelhouse below. Leaning across the faintly lit compass he called down the voice-pipe: ‘How’s her head down there?’
‘South, eighty west, sir.’
The two compasses were in agreement. ‘Right … Our course is south-east, Adams. Bring her round very slowly when we begin to move.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Adams’s voice, like the signalman’s hard breathing at his elbow, reflected the tension that was binding them all.
The Captain took a deep breath. ‘Slow ahead starboard.’
‘Slow ahead starboard, sir.’
The
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