Shortly after eleven o’clock he phoned the camp. Colonel Standing was not in his office. It was Mike Ferguson who took the call. He listened to what Cliff had to say and agreed to get Colonel Standing to ring him back. Meantime he passed the information to Major Braddock and it was Braddock who raised it with the Colonel immediately on his return. It is more than likely that he used Cliff Morgan’s vague fears — and they were nothing more at that time — to reinforce his own argument. Almost certainly Standing rejected them. As an Air Ministry man, Cliff had no connection with the Army. Standing was under no obligation to accept the local Met. Office’s advice or even to consult him. He may well have considered that Braddock was exaggerating. At any rate, he didn’t phone Cliff Morgan, deciding instead to wait for the shipping forecast which was by then due in less than two hours.
Quite a number of officers were gathered round the Mess radio at one-forty. The synopsis was much the same as before — gale warnings and the complex low pressure area ‘ intensifying to give a northerly air stream for much of the British Isles. The forecast for the Hebrides was no worse than it had been at six forty-five — winds northerly, gale force 8 increasing to 9 later; visibility good but chance of rain squalls.
As a result, Colonel Standing took no action. There was not, in fact, much he could have done at that stage, but another commander might have thought it worth walking across to the Met. Office for a local weather briefing. There may have been something personal in the fact that Standing didn’t do this; he was a man of narrow moral outlook and knowing Cliffs record he probably disliked him.
I missed the one-forty shipping forecast for I was lying in my bunk at the time. I wasn’t asleep. I was just lying there because it was easier to lie down than to stand up, and even flat on my back I had to hang on. The ship was lurching very violently and every now and then there was an explosion like gunfire and the whole cabin shivered. McDermott was groaning in the bunk ahead of me. The poor devil had long since brought up everything but his guts; twice he’d been thrown on to the floor.
About four in the afternoon I got up, paid a visit to the heads and had a wash. The heads were on the starboard side and from the porthole, I had a windward view; it was an ugly-looking sea, made more ugly by the fact that we were passing through a squall. Daylight was obscured by the murk so that it was almost dark. Visibility was poor, the seas very big with a rolling thrust to their broken tops and the spindrift whipped in long streamers by the wind.
I went down the alleyway to the wheelhouse. Stratton had taken over. He stood braced against the chart table staring out of the for’ard porthole. He was unshaven and the stubble of his beard looked almost black in that strange half light. A sudden lurch flung me across the wheelhouse.
I
He turned as I fetched up beside him. ‘Glad to see you haven’t succumbed.’ He smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes, and his face was beginning to show the strain. ‘My DR puts us about there.’ He pencilled a small circle on the chart. Measuring the distance from Laerg by eye against minutes of latitude shown on the side of the chart it looked as though we still had about eighteen miles to go. But I knew his dead reckoning couldn’t be exact in these conditions.
‘Will you make it before dark?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘We’re down to six knots. Glass falling, wind backing and increasing. It came up like a line squall. Some sort of trough, I imagine.’ He passed me the log. Barometric pressure was down to 976, wind speed 40–45 knots — force 9. ‘Looks as though the weather boys have slipped up.’ He gave me the one-forty shipping forecast. ‘If the wind increases any more before we get under the lee in Shelter Bay, we’re going to have to turn and run before it.’ He glanced at the radar. It was set to maximum range — 30 miles; but the sweep lights showed only a speckle of dots all round the screen. The probing eye was obscured by the squall, confused by the breaking seas. ‘We’ll pick up Laerg soon.’ It was less of a statement than an endeavour to convince himself and I had a feeling he was glad of my company. ‘Ever sailed in these waters?’ He switched the Decca to 15-mile range.
‘No,’ I said. ‘But the Pacific can be quite as bad as the North Atlantic and the Indian Ocean isn’t all that pleasant during the monsoon.’
‘I’ve never commanded a proper ship,’ he said. ‘Always landing craft.’ And after a moment he added, ‘Considering what they’re designed for, they’re amazingly seaworthy. But they still have their limitations. They’ll only take so much.’ As though to underline his point a towering wall of water rose above the starboard bow, toppled and hit with a crash that staggered the ship. Water poured green ‘ over the sides, cascading like a waterfall into the well of the tank deck. I watched the pumps sucking it out through the gratings and wondered how long they would be able to cope with that sort of intake. The steward appeared with two mugs of tea. A cut on his forehead was oozing blood and there was blood on the mugs as he thrust them into our hands, balancing precariously to the surge and swoop as we plunged over that big sea.
‘Everything all right below decks, Perkins?’
‘Pretty fair, sir — considering.’ I saw his eyes dart to the porthole and away again as though he were scared by what he saw out there. ‘Will we be in Shelter Bay soon, sir?’
‘Two or three hours.’ Stratton’s voice was calm, matter-of-fact. ‘Bring coffee and sandwiches as soon as we get in. I’ll be getting hungry by then.’
‘Very good, sir.’ And the boy fled, comforted, but glad to leave the bridge with its view of the wildness of the elements.
The squall turned to sleet and then to hail, but the hail sounded no louder than the spray which spattered the walls of the wheelhouse with a noise like bullets. And then suddenly the squall was gone and it was lighter. The radar screen was no longer fuzzed. It still had a speckled look caused by the break of the waves, but right at the top a solid splodge of light came and went as the sweep light recorded the first emerging outline of Laerg.
It was about half an hour later that the helmsman relayed a report from the lookout on the open bridge immediately over the wheelhouse. ‘Land fine on the starb’d bow, sir.’
‘Tell him to give the bearing.’
The helmsman repeated the order into the voice pipe close above his head. ‘Bearing Green o-five or it may be o-ten. He says there’s too much movement for him to get it more accurate than that.’
Stratton glanced at the radar screen, then reached for his duffel coat and went out by the port door, leaving it open to fill the wheelhouse with violent blasts of cold air and a whirling haze of spray. He was back within the minute. ‘Laerg all right — bearing o-three as far as I can tell. There’s a lot of movement up there and it’s blowing like hell.’
But at least visual contact had been established. I leaned against the chart table, watching as he entered it in the log, hoping to God that Shelter Bay would give us the protection we needed. It was now only two hours’ steaming away. But even as my nerves were relaxing to the sense of imminent relief from this constant battering, the helmsman announced, ‘Lookout reports something about weather coming through on the radio.’
Stratton glanced up quickly, but I didn’t need the surprise on his face to tell me that there was something very odd about this. I had had a talk with one of the radio operators before I’d turned in and had discovered something of the set-up. There were two radio operators on board working round the clock in 12-hour watches. Their main contact was the Coastal Command net — either Rosyth or Londonderry. When not working the CCN, they kept their set tuned to 2182 kcs., which is the International Distress frequency, and any calls on this frequency were relayed through a repeater loudspeaker to the upper bridge. ‘Something about trawlers,’ the helmsman reported. I think Stratton and I both had the same thought, that we were picking up a deep-sea trawler. Trawlers and some other small ships use 2182 kcs. on Voice. ‘Lookout says he couldn’t get all of it. There’s too much noise up there.’