HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright & Information

  About the Author

  Forward

  Book One: '˜HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour'

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Book Two: Leave Cancelled

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Book Three: Heavy Rescue

  1: SEPTEMBER

  2: CHRISTMAS

  3: SPRING

  4: SUMMER

  5: SEPTEMBER

  Synopses of Nicholas Monsarrat Titles

  Copyright & Information

  HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour

  First published in 1947

  © Estate of Nicholas Monsarrat; House of Stratus 1947-2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Nicholas Monsarrat to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2011 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  1842321471 9781842321478 Print

  0755128982 9780755128983 Kindle

  0755128990 9780755128990 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Nicholas Monsarrat was born in Liverpool, the son of a distinguished surgeon. He was educated at Winchester and then at Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied law. However, his subsequent career as a solicitor encountered a swift end when he decided to leave Liverpool for London, with a half-finished manuscript under his arm and £40 in his pocket.

  The first of his books to attract attention was the largely autobiographical ‘This is the Schoolroom’. It is a largely autobiographical ‘coming of age’ novel dealing with the end of college life, the ‘Hungry Thirties’, and the Spanish Civil War. During World War Two he joined the Royal Navy and served in corvettes. His war experience provided the framework for the novel ‘HMS Marlborough will enter Harbour’, and one of his best known books. ‘The Cruel Sea’ was made into a classic film starring Jack Hawkins. After the war he became a director of the UK Information Service, first in Johannesburg, then in Ottawa.

  Established as a sort after writer who was also highly regarded by critics, Monsarrat’s career eventually concluded with his epic ‘The Master Mariner’, a novel on seafaring life from Napoleonic times to the present.

  Well known for his concise story telling and tense narrative, he became one of the most successful novelists of the twentieth century, whose rich and varied collection bears the hallmarks of a truly gifted master of his craft.

  ‘A professional who gives us our money’s worth. The entertainment value is high’- Daily Telegraph

  Forward

  These three short stories, dealing with differing aspects of love in wartime, were written at intervals during the past two years. It was my original intention to publish the second one, Leave Cancelled, as a separate volume, but my publishers disagreed for reasons concerned in varying degrees with production difficulties and professional caution. I dare say they were right. I must, however, remark that Leave Cancelled, published as a separate novel in America, dodged in and out of the best-sellers lists for more than six months, sold 60,000 copies, and earned, in a mid-Western journal, the singular heading ‘Briton Slave To Sex’. This proves something, though I am not sure what.

  N M

  Book One: ‘HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour’

  Chapter One

  The sloop, Marlborough, 1,200 tons, complement 8 officers and 130 men, was torpedoed at dusk on the last day of 1942 while on independent passage from Iceland to the Clyde. She was on her way home for refit, and for the leave that went with it, after a fourteen-month stretch of North Atlantic convoy escort with no break, except for routine boiler-cleaning. Three weeks’ leave to each watch – that had been the buzz going round the ship’s company when they left Reykjavik after taking in the last convoy: but many of them never found out how much truth there was in that buzz, for the torpedo struck at the worst moment, with two-thirds of the ship’s company having tea below decks, and when it exploded under the forward mess-deck at least sixty of them were killed outright.

  HMS Marlborough was an old ship, seventeen years old, and she took the outrage as an old lady of breeding should. At the noise and jar of the explosion a delicate shudder went all through her: then as her speed fell off there was stillness, while she seemed to be making an effort to ignore the whole thing: and then, brought face to face with the fury of this mortal attack, gradually and disdainfully she conceded the victory.

  The deck plating of the fo’c’sle buckled and sagged, pulled downwards by the weight of the anchors and cables: all this deck, indeed, crumpled as far as the four-inch gunmounting, which toppled forwards until the gun muzzles were pointing foolishly to the sea; a big lurch tore loose many of the ammunition lockers and sent them cascading over the side. Until the way of her sixteen knots fell off, there were crunching noises as successive bulkheads took the weight of water, butted at it for a moment, and then gave in: and thus, after a space, she lay – motionless, cruelly hit, two hundred miles from home.

  So far it had been an affair of metal: now swiftly it became an affair of men. From forward came muffled shouting – screaming, some of it – borne on the wind down the whole length of the ship, to advertise the shambles buried below. The dazed gun’s crew from ‘A’ gun, which had been directly over the explosion, climbed down from their sagging platform and drew off aft. There was a noise of trampling running feet from all over the ship: along alleyways, up ladders leading from the untouched spaces aft: confused voices, tossed to and fro by the wind, called as men tried to find out how bad the damage was, what the orders were, whether their friends had been caught or not.

  On the upper deck, near the boats and at the foot of the bridge ladders, the clatter and slur of feet and voices reached its climax. In the few moments before a firm hand was taken, with every light in the ship out and only the shock of the explosion as a guide to what had happened, there was confusion, noisy and urgent: the paramount need to move quickly clashed with indecision and doubt as to where that move could best be made. The dusk, the rising sea, the bitterly cold wind, which carried an acrid smell in sharp eddying puffs, were all part of this discordant aftermath: the iron trampling of those racing feet all over the ship bound it together, coordinating fear into a vast uneasy whole, a spur for panic if panic ever showed itself.

  It never did show itself. The first disciplined reaction, one of many such small reassurances, to reach the bridge was the quartermaster’s voice, admirably matter-of-fact, coming up the wheelhouse voice-pipe: ‘Gyro compass gone dead, sir!’ The midshipman, who shared the watc
h with the First Lieutenant and was at that moment licking a lip split open on the edge of the glass dodger, looked round uncertainly, found he was the only officer on the bridge, and answered: ‘Very good. Steer by magnetic,’ before he realized the futility of this automatic order. Then he jerked his head sideways, level with another voice-pipe, the one leading to the Captain’s cabin, and called: ‘Captain, sir!’

  There was no answer. Probably the Captain was on his way up already. God, suppose he’d been killed, though … The midshipman called again: ‘Captain, sir!’ and a voice behind him said: ‘All right, Mid. I heard it.’

  He turned round, to find the comforting bulk of the Captain’s duffle coat outlined against the dusk. It was not light enough to see the expression on his face, nor was there anything in his voice to give a clue to it. It did not occur to the midshipman to speculate about this, in any case: for him, this was simply the Captain, the man he had been waiting for, the man on whom every burden could now be squarely placed.

  ‘Torpedo, sir.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The Captain, moving with purpose but without hurry, stepped up on the central compass platform, glanced once round him and sat down. There was something special in the act of sitting down, there in the middle of the noise and movement reaching the bridge from all over the ship, and everyone near him caught it. The Captain, on the bridge, sitting in the Captain’s chair. Of course: that was what they had been waiting for … It was the beginning, the tiny tough centre, of control and order. Soon it would spread outwards.

  ‘Which side was it from?’

  ‘Port, sir. Just under “A” gun.’

  ‘Tell the engine room what’s happened … Where is the First Lieutenant?’

  ‘He must have gone down, sir. I suppose he’s with the damage control party.’

  Up the voice-pipe came the quartermaster’s voice again: ‘She won’t come round, sir. The wheel’s hard a-starboard.’

  ‘Never mind.’ The Captain turned his head slightly. ‘Pilot!’

  A figure, bent over the chart table behind him, straightened up. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Work out our position, and we’ll send a signal.’

  ‘Just getting it out now.’

  The Captain bent forward to the voice-pipe again. ‘Bosun’s Mate!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Find the First Lieutenant. He’ll be forrard somewhere. Tell him to report the damage as soon as he can.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  That, at least, was a small space cleared … Under him the ship felt sluggish and helpless; on the upper deck the voices clamoured, from below the cries still welled up. He looked round him, trying in the increasing darkness to find out who was on the bridge. Not everyone he expected to see, not all the men who should have collected at such a moment, were there. The signalman and the bridge messenger. Two look-outs. Bridger, his servant, standing just behind him. Pilot and the Mid. Someone else he could not make out.

  He called: ‘Coxswain?’

  There was a pause, and then a voice said: ‘He was below, sir.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Adams, sir.’

  Adams was the Chief Bosun’s Mate, and the second senior rating on board. After a moment the Captain said: ‘If he doesn’t get out, you take over, Adams … You’d better organize three or four of your quartermasters, for piping round the ship. I’ll want you to stay by me. If there’s anything to be piped you can pass it on.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  There was too much noise on the upper deck, for a start. But perhaps it would be better if he spoke to them over the loudhailer. Once more the Captain turned his head.

  ‘Yeoman!’

  Another pause, and then the same definitive phrase, this time from the signalman of the watch: ‘He was below, sir.’

  A wicked lurch, and another tearing noise from below, covered the silence after the words were spoken. But the Captain seemed to take them in his stride.

  ‘See if the hailer’s working,’ he said to the signalman.

  ‘I’ve got the position, sir,’ said Haines, the navigating officer. ‘Will you draft a signal?’

  ‘Get on to the W/T office and see if they can send it, first.’

  ‘The hailer’s all right, sir,’ said the signalman. ‘Batteries still working.’

  ‘Very good. Train the speaker aft.’

  He clicked on the microphone, and from force of habit blew through it sharply. A healthy roar told him that the thing was in order. He cleared his throat.

  ‘Attention, please! This is the Captain speaking.’ His voice, magnified without distortion, overcame the wind and the shouting, which died away to nothing, ‘I want to tell you what’s happened. We’ve been torpedoed on the port side, under “A” gun. The First Lieutenant is finding out about the damage now. I want you all to keep quiet, and move about as little as possible, until I know what the position is … “X” gun’s crew will stand fast, the rest of the watch on deck clear away the boats and rafts ready for lowering. Do not start lowering, or do anything else, until I give the order over this hailer, or until you hear the pipe. That is all.’

  The speaker clicked off, leaving silence on the bridge and all over the upper deck. Only the voices hidden below still called. He became aware that Haines was standing by his elbow, preparing to speak.

  ‘What is it, Pilot?’

  ‘It’s the W/T office, sir. They can’t transmit.’

  ‘Who’s down there?’

  ‘The leading tel., sir. The PO tel. was below.’ (That damned phrase again. If those two messes, the Chiefs’ and the Petty Officers’, were both written off, it was going to play hell with organizing the next move, whatever it was.) ‘But he knows what he’s doing, sir,’ Haines went on. ‘The dynamo’s been thrown off the board, but the set’s had a hell of a knock anyway.’

  ‘Go down yourself and make sure.’ Haines, as well as being navigating officer, was an electrical expert, and this was in fact his department.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘Midshipman!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Pass the word to the Gunnery Officer.’

  ‘I’m here, sir.’ Guns’ tall figure loomed up behind him. ‘I’ve been looking at “A” gun.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s finished, I’m afraid, sir.’

  Guns knew his job, and the Captain did not ask him to elaborate. Instead he said: ‘I think we’ll try a little offensive action while we’re waiting, in case those — come up to take a look at us.’ He considered. ‘Close up on “X” gun, go into local control, fire a spread of star-shell through this arc’ – he indicated the port bow and beam– ‘and let fly if you see anything. I’ll leave the details to you.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Guns clumped off down the ladder on his way aft. It was one of his idiosyncrasies to wear street-cleaner’s thigh boots with thick wooden soles, and his movements up and down the ship were easily traceable, earning indeed a good deal of fluent abuse from people who were trying to get to sleep below. As the heavy footfalls receded aft, the Captain stood up and leant over the port side of the bridge, staring down at the tumbling water. There was nothing to be seen of the main area of the damage, which was hidden by the outward flare of the bows; but the ship had less freedom of movement now – she was deeper, more solidly settled in the water. They must have taken tons of it in the ripped-up spaces forward: the fo’c’sle covering them looked like a slowly crumbling ruin. It was about time the First Lieutenant came through with his report. If they had to – ‘What’s that?’ he asked suddenly.

  A thin voice was calling, ‘Bridge, Bridge,’ from one of the voice-pipes. He bent down to the row nearest to him, but from none of them did the voice issue clearly. Behind him the midshipman was conducting the same search on his side. The voice went on calling, ‘Bridge, Bridge, Bridge,’ in a patient monotone. It was the Captain’s servant, Bridger, who finally traced it – a voice-pipe low down on the deck, its
anti-spray cover still clipped on.

  The man bent down to it and snapped back the cover. ‘Bridge here.’

  A single murmured sentence answered him. Bridger looked up to the Captain. ‘It’s the Engineer Officer, sir, speaking from the galley flat.’

  The Captain bent down. A waft of bitter fume-laden air met his nostrils. ‘Yes, Chief?’

  ‘I’m afraid Number One got caught by that last bulkhead, sir.’

  ‘What happened? I heard it go a little while back.’

  ‘We thought it would hold, sir.’ The level voice, coming from the heart of the ruined fo’c’sle, had an apologetic note, as if the speaker, even in that shambles, had had the cool honesty to convict himself of an error of judgment. ‘It did look like holding for a bit, too. Number One was with the damage control party, between the seamen’s mess-deck and the bathrooms. They’d shut the watertight door behind them, and were just going to shore up, when the forrard bulkhead went.’ Chief paused. ‘You know what it’s like, sir. We can’t get at them without opening up.’

  ‘Can’t do that now, Chief.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Can you hear anything?’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘How many were there with the First Lieutenant?’

  ‘Fourteen, sir. Mostly stokers.’ There was another pause. ‘I took charge down here, sir. We’re shoring up the next one.’

  ‘What do you think of it?’

  ‘Not too good. It’s badly strained already, and leaking down one seam.’ There was, now, a slightly sharpened note in the voice travelling up from below. ‘There’s a hell of a mess down here, sir. And if this one goes, that’ll mean the whole lot.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ The Captain thought quickly, while overhead and to port the sea was suddenly lit up by a cold yellow glare – the first spread of star-shell, four slowly dropping lights shadowing their spinning parachutes against the cloud overhead. Very pretty … The news from below could hardly have been worse: it added up to fully a third of the ship flooded, all the forward mess-decks cut off, fourteen men drowned at one stroke, and God knows how many more caught by the original explosion. ‘Look here, Chief. I don’t want any more men lost like that. You must use your own judgment about getting out in a hurry. See how the shoring up goes, and let me know as soon as you can if you think it’ll hold.’