XVIII
RENDEZVOUS
ALMOST hourly they round the Point, turning in from seaward with a fine swing and thrash of propellors to steer a careful course through the boom defences. Screaming gulls wheel and poise and dive around them, exulting to welcome the new-comers in, and the musical clank and rattle of anchor cables, as the ships bring up in the Roads, mark emphatic periods to this--the short coasting section of the voyage.
"Safe here!" sing the chains, as they link out over the open hawse. "Thus far, anyway, in spite of fog and coast danger, of mine and submarine," and the brown hill-side joins echo to the clamour of the wheeling gulls, letting all know the ships have come in to join the convoy.
The bay, that but a day ago lay broad and silent and empty, now seems to narrow its proportions as each high-sided merchantman comes in; the hills draw nearer with every broad hull that anchors, wind-rode, in the blue of the bay. As if in key with the illusion, the broad expanse of shallow, inshore water, that before gave distance to the hills, now sheds its power, cut and furrowed as it becomes by thrash and wake of tugs and launches all making out to serve the larger vessels.
On the high mound of the harbour-master's look-out, keen eyes note all movements in the bay. The signal-mast and yard bear a gay setting of flags and symbols, and rapid changes and successions show the yeoman of signals and his mates at work, recording and replying, taking mark and tally of the ships as they arrive. Up and down goes the red-and-white-barred answering pendant to say that it is duly noted—"War Trident, Marmion, and Pearl Shell report arrival"—or the semaphore arms, swinging smartly, tell H.M.S. 03xyz that permission to enter harbour (she having safely escorted the trio to port) is approved.
Out near the entrance to the bay, where the 'gateships' of the boom defences show clear water, the patrol steamer of the Examination Service lays-to, challenging each incoming vessel to state her name and particulars. These, in turn, are signalled to the shore and the yeoman writes: "Begins war trident for norfolk va. speed nine knots is ready for sea stop marmion for Bahia reports steering engine broken down will require ten hours complete repairs stop pearl shell nine and half short-handed one fireman two trimmers report agents stop ends."
If room is scanty, the convoy office has at least an atmosphere in keeping with its mission. Nestling close under the steep brow of the harbour-master's look-out, it was, in happier days, the life-boat coxswain's dwelling, and a constant reminder of sea-menace and emergency almost blocks the door—the long boat-house and launch-ways of the life-boat. Four square and solid, the little house only has windows overlooking the bay, as if attending strictly to affairs at sea and having no eyes for landward doings; the peering eaves face straight out towards the 'gateships' as though even the stone and lime were intent on the sailing of the convoys, whose order and formation are arranged within their walls. The upper room has a desk or two, a telephone, a chart table, and a typewriter, and here the port convoy officer and his assistants trim and index and arrange the ships in order of their sailing. At the window a seaman-writer is typing out 'pictures' for the next sailing—signal tables, formation and dispersal diagrams, call signs, zigzags, constantly impressing that Greenwich Mean Time is the thing (no Summer Time at sea), and that courses are True, not Magnetic. The clack and release of his machine seem quite a part of conversation between the convoy officer and his lieutenant; the whole is so apparently disjointed in references to this ship and that, to repairs and tides, and shortage of 'hands' and water-supply and turns in the hawse, and even Spanish influenza! To one accustomed to single-ship work the whole is mildly bewildering, and one readily understands that sailing a merchant convoy calls for more than the simple word of command.
"War Trident, nine knots," reads the junior, from a signal slip. "Marmion, a doubtful starter—steering-gear disabled. Pearl Shell, three stokehold hands short."
"Trident only nine! That be damned for a yarn!" says his senior, reaching for the slip. "Nine will reduce the speed of the whole convoy a knot. She must be good for more—new ship, isn't she?"
"Yes. One of these new standards—built for eleven knots and chocked up afterwards with fancy gear and 'gadjets' to rob the boilers."
"Lemme see—nine knots"—turning to the pages of a tide-book, the convoy officer makes a rough sum of it. "High water at Oysterpool—so—arrived here—distance—and seventy-one. Why, he's come on from Oysterpool at ten, no less, and that's not allowing for the zigzag either!"
The lieutenant looks round for his cap. Clearly there is a definite 'drill' for captains who come on from Oysterpool at ten and declare their speed as nine, and he is ready when the P.C.O. passes orders. "All right. You go off and see the captain. Try to get him to spring at least half a knot. I expect he's allowing a bit for 'coming up,' and going easy till he knows his new ship. . . . I'll 'phone Pearl Shell's agents and warn 'em to hustle round for firemen. Marmion? Yes. Board Marmion on your way back. Wants ten hours—she should be able to keep her sailing." A year agone there would have been but moderate and passive interest in the varying troubles of the ships and their crews, but much water has flowed over the Red Ensign since then, and we are learning.
The convoy lieutenant goes down a winding path to the boat-slip and boards his launch to set off for the Roads. The morning, that broke fair and unclouded, has turned grey; a damp sea-mist is wandering over the bay in thin wraiths and feathers, but sunlight on the brown of the distant hills promises a clearing as the day draws on. Fishing-smacks, delayed by want of wind, are creeping in to the market steps under sweep of their long oars, and their lazy canvas rustles, and the booms and sheet-blocks creak as the wash of the picket-launch sets them swaying. In from the sea channels, with their sweeps still wet and glistening, come the Agnes Whitwell, Fortuna, the Dieudonné, and Brother Fred, each with a White Ensign aloft and a naked grey gun on their high bows. They are late in their return, and one can guess at deadly iron spheres stirred from the depths of the fairways, thrown buoyant in the wash astern, and destroyed by crack of gunfire. The commodore of the sisterly pairs, a young lieutenant of Reserve, waves a cheery greeting as we pass.
DAWN: CONVOY PREPARING TO PUT TO SEA
And now the Roads, windless and misty, the anchored merchantmen swung at different angles, in their gay fantasy of dazzle-paint, borrowing further motley from the mist, and leering grotesquely through the thin vapours. But for her lines, undeniably fine and graceful, War Trident is the standardest of standards. Dazzle-painters have slapped their spite at her in lurid swathes and, not content, have draped her sheer in harlequin crenellations. Her low pipe-funnel upstands in rigid perpendicular. ("Chief! Pit yer haun' up an' feel if th' kettle's bilin'!") No masts break the long length of her, saving only a midship signal-pole that serves her wireless aerials and affords a hod-like perch for the look-out aloft. She is stark new, smooth of plating, and showing even the hammer-strokes on her rivets. Through the thin paint on her sides, marks and symbols of construction appear, the letters of her strakes painted in firm white, with here and there an unofficial shipyard embellishment—"Good old Jeemy Quin," or "Tae hell wi' the Kiser!" She is ready for sea, and life-boats and davits, swung outboard, tower overhead as the picket-launch draws up at her gaunt side. She is in ballast trim, and it is evident that her standard carpenters hold strictly to a rule that ignores a varying freeboard—the side ladder is short by eight feet, and only by middling the rungs (a leap at the bottom, a long swaying climb, and a drag at the top) are we able to clamber on board.
A special 'drill' for conducting affairs with masters of brand-new ships should be devised immediately by Admiralty, and the mildest of Low-Church curates (trimmed by previous dire tortures to the utter limit of exasperation) be provided, on whom officials may be well practised. Usually the master has been hurried out of port by the last rivet driven home, with strange officers and the very weakest of new crews, in a ship jam-full of the newest 'gadjets,' and the least possible reserve of gear to work them. Quickly and bitterly the fourth sentence of Confession at Morning Prayer is recalled to him—the things undone crowd round, and there is nothing in the bare hull to serve as a makeshift. The engines and auxiliaries (that, with a builder's man at every bearing, worked well on trials) now develop tricks and turns to keep the chief engineer and his fledgling juniors on the run; the mate cries "Kamerad" to all suggestions, pointing to his hopeless watch of one. (Eight deck: four in a watch, less one helmsman and two look-outs, equals one.) Add to the sum of difficulties that the captain has probably been ashore since he lost his last ship, and finds the new tactics and signals and zigzags unfamiliar; through it all the want of familiar little trifles and fixings (that go so far to help a ready action), sustains a feeling of irritation.
It is little wonder that the convoy lieutenant goes warily, and, indeed, but for the brilliant inspiration of using the 'last ship,' it seems probable that the convoy will have to proceed at Trident's modest nine knots. Bluntly, the captain is in undisguised ill-humour. He has been on deck practically since leaving the builder's yard, and his weary eyes suggest a need for prompt sleep. His room, still reeking of new paint and varnish, is in some disorder, and shows traces of an anxious passage along the coast. 'Notices to Mariners' lie open at the minefield sketches, with a half-smoked pipe atop to keep the pages open; chart upon chart is piled (for want of a rack) on bed and couch; oilskins, crumpled as when drawn off, hang over the edge of a door—not a peg to hang them on; an open sextant case, jammed secure by pillows, lies on the washstand lid; books of sailing directions, a taffrail log, some red socket-flares, are heaped awry in a corner of the room; the whole an evidence that lockers and minor ship conveniences are not yet standardized. Pray goodness he may have a stout honest thief of a chief mate, able and willing to find a baulk or two of timber, and a few nails and brass screws and copper tacks and a curtain-rod or two and a bolt of canvas!
The convoy lieutenant, unheeding a somewhat surly return of his greeting, produces Convoy Form No. AX, and starts in cheerfully to fill the vacant columns. "Tonnage, captain?—register will do. Crew? Guns? Coal?—consumpt. at speeds. Revolutions per half-knot?" The form completed, he hands it over for signature, thus tactfully drawing the captain's attention to the secretarial work he has done for him. "What's the speed? Nine and a half?" "Speed!" answers the Old Man. "Hell! This bunch of hair-springs can't keep out of her own way! Speed? The damned funnel's so low we can't get draught to burn a cigarette-paper; and these new pumps they've given her!. . . Well, we might do nine, but only in fine weather, mind you. Nine knots!"
"You'll have to do better for this convoy, captain. There's not a ship under nine and a half; but there may be a bunch of eight-knotters going out in five days."
"Nothing under nine and a half! What? Why, there's Pearl Shell came in with us. She hasn't a kick above nine. When I was in the old Collonia, we. . . ."
"The Collonia? A fine ship, Gad! Were you in her, captain, when she was strafed? Let's see—Mediterranean, wasn't it?" The captain nods pleasantly, as if accepting a compliment.
"Umm! Mediterranean—troops—a hell of a job to get them off. Lost some, though"—regretfully.
The convoy lieutenant turns a good card. "Must be a change to come down to ten knots, captain, after a crack ship like Collonia. What could she do? Sixteen?"
"Oh no. We could get an eighteen-knot clip out of her—more, if we wanted!" (If War Trident's speed be low and doubtful, the Old Man can safely pile the knots on his stricken favourite.) "She was a ship, not a damned parish-rigged barge like this—a poverty-stricken hulk that. . . ."
"Yes. I heard about her from Benson, of War Trumpet. He sailed in last convoy. Said he was glad he wasn't appointed here."
"Wasn't appointed here, be damned! Didn't have the chance. Why, that ship of his isn't in the same class at all. The Trident can steer, anyway, and when we get things fixed up. . . . She has the hull of a fine ship. If only we could get a decent funnel on her. . . . Here, I'll try her at your nine and a half knots! I'll bet War Trumpet can't do a kick above nine!"
Be it noted that the convoy officers have the wavy gold lace of the R.N.R. for their rank stripes; plain half-inch ones of the Royal Navy might have had to let the convoy sail at nine, after all—not knowing the 'grip' of the 'last ship.'
EVENING: PLYMOUTH HOE