Coats shared the view of the German gunners. As he gazed from the bridge at his battered burning ship, he decided she would sink at any moment. She was wallowing down by the stern with a list of 20 degrees to starboard. The quarter-deck was awash and she was rolling sluggishly. The main compartments were so full of water that every time she rolled it felt as if she would not right herself again. So he gave the order: "Prepare to abandon ship." As one of the young ratings descended the starboard ladder from the bridge, shouting out the order, he was hit by a shell splinter.
As a result, a garbled version of the order spread rapidly round the ship. Deafened by the guns and bursting shells, the crew thought the order had been given "Abandon ship."[7]
Carley floats were thrown over, the whaler was lowered, and a few men began jumping overboard to swim or hang on to floats which drifted near the ship.
But Worcester did not sink. She was probably saved from complete annihilation by a tiny bit of luck—Gneisenaus heavy guns went out of action. A shell which was being rammed into a heavy gun jammed and the cartridge case became twisted, stopping the moving ammunition belt.
Worcester was still afloat but now with a fire in the paint store which the crew tried to get under control with buckets of water. The forepeak, the locker-room, the wardroom, the after-magazine, the shell-room and the after-stores were all flooded. A newer destroyer would have sunk but her older, closer frames probably saved her. But she was finished and out of the fight.
Nightmare scenes were taking place aboard her. When the shell shattered the lower bridge, destroying the ammunition locker underneath it, the force of the explosion also jammed the water-tight doors of the radio room below the bridge, and the men inside were roasted like turkeys.
The helmsman, with a shattered hand, still kept trying to steer. Another sailor next to him in the wheelhouse was a mass of blood and bone.
One young sailor in a gun turret had his arm blown off and picked it up sobbing and tried to push it on again. As the gun was still in action, a Petty officer knocked him unconscious. It was not only the kindest thing he could have done, but it also prevented panic spreading among the young gun crew, several of whom were also wounded. The unwounded gun crews continued to fire until they ran out of ammunition. Ward and his mates still tried to fire their gun, but the ship began to settle so rapidly into the water that they could no longer get a bearing.
Worcester's guns fell silent. All that could be heard were the screams of the wounded, the hiss of steam escaping from the broken boilers and shouted orders as she swung helplessly in the waves.
At the same time the Germans' big guns stopped raining death on to Worcester. Through his binoculars, Captain Fein of Gneisenau watched the blazing destroyer wallowing in the heavy seas. She seemed gradually to be settling into the water so he gave the order to cease fire. He said, "I watched our guns score direct hits on the English destroyer and it seemed to me that she heeled so far over under their impact that she nearly capsized. I ordered our guns to cease firing, as there seemed no point in wasting shells on a ship already sinking. No ship of that size could be hit so heavily and survive."
No more British destroyers could be seen from either ship. Worcester had presumably sunk in a cloud of black smoke and the others had vanished into the mist. Midshipman Bohsehke aboard Prinz Eugen fired once again at long range at a dimly recognizable ship and also at the gun flashes of another ship astern. Then Gunnery Commander Jasper ordered: "Halt, Batterie, Halt!"
It was 3:56 p.m. The destroyer action was over after eleven minutes. The shelling of Worcester had only lasted three minutes.
The official German report said: "Both Prinz Eugen and Gneisenau opened fire with their heavy naval guns. The English destroyers turned on a parallel course, engaging the main formation in a running gun battle. They were firing torpedoes at the same time as the German ships were attacked from the air by torpedo carriers. After the first direct hits on the enemy destroyers — three of the hits seen from the Gneisenau caused fires — the Prinz Eugen sank one destroyer and set another on fire. The enemy turned away sharply in order to engage while passing and were almost immediately out of sight in the mist." The German report was incorrect — only Worcester was damaged.
From the point of view of the German warships, it had not been a satisfactory action. Both Fein of Gneisenau and Brinkmann of Prinz Eugen regretted they were not armed with torpedoes. If they had, they believed they would have had a good chance of finishing off the destroyers more easily than with the heaviest gunfire. But they had no warheads aboard, as Group West had ordered them to keep all explosive material to the minimum.
The Worcester, hit seven times by heavy shells, was a smoking shambles and seemed certain to sink, the decks were slippery with blood and the bridge was spattered with brains and chunks of torn red flesh. Blood and trickling green paint from the damaged paint shop flowed round shattered bodies in oilskins about the decks. A sailor came staggering out on deck trying to hold his guts in with his hands.
The unwounded survivors of the crew waited helplessly for German destroyers to approach and finish them off. None came. They were sweeping ahead of their battle squadron, scouting for British capital ships, which were in fact hundreds of miles away in Scapa Flow.
As both the doctor and the sick-bay attendant were knocked out for a time, the rumour went round the ship that everyone in the sick-bay had been killed. But Dr. Jackson and his assistant dazedly picked themselves up as a sailor staggered through the door and fell unconscious. After they had lifted him into a bunk the doctor scrambled up on deck. He was still so dazed that he forgot his equipment and had to go back to grab as many dressings as he could. He stuffed two bottles of morphine into his pocket and picked up a torch, as all the lights had failed and it was becoming dark. Some slightly wounded men from "A" and "B" gun crews appeared, grinning apologetically, at the door.
Only when he climbed on deck did he realize the battle was over. The noise had ceased, to be replaced by an eerie quiet as the ship rolled sluggishly surrounded by towering waves. He realized that he and the rest of the crew were going round shouting at each other — the sudden cessation of the bombardment having failed to register.
The doctor crawled about the blood-stained decks shoving morphine into the wounded and dying men. After attending to a man on "B" gun, he went to a bad casualty in the wheel-house. Then he went down to the waist of the ship and worked his way along the upper deck. A lot of wounded men were lying or sitting under the pom-poms and beside the empty torpedo tubes, where Bill Wellman, miraculously unwounded, was attending to them.
Beside the 12-pounder gun, some men were lying so still that the doctor knew he need not stop. He went on to the after-superstructure, where there were some dreadful casualties among the men of the supply and repair party.
A leading stoker, his stomach ripped out and his arm torn off, staggered to the side to drown himself because he knew he was finished. Chief Engineer Griffiths pulled him back on to the deck and the doctor tried to operate on him, but he died a few minutes later.
Then Griffiths saw First Officer Dick Taudevin hurrying along the deck and said to him, "This is a fine old pot mess. Why are you running about so much?" Taudevin replied, "I am trying to stop some silly buggers from jumping overboard. They think the order has been given to abandon ship."
7
As a result of this disaster aboard the