'Singled up and ready for sea, sir. All hands on board,' the first lieutenant reported, standing in the doorway of the captain's cabin.
In the chill of the early morning breeze whistling across the wheelhouse roof, Captain Trevellion took his new command to sea for the first time. It was bleak on the exposed deck: the sun, a cold yellow disc, was only a few degrees above the horizon and white horses were churning up the sound. Icarus was turning up nicely into the wind, as long as he kept a touch of headway on her. The frigate was swinging swiftly now, lining up to the gap between the breakwaters.
'Finished with the tug. Thank her, Yeoman,' ordered Trevellion. ' I'm going below.' But before he swung himself down the ladder he saw that Icarus was too close to the south-west arm of the breakwaters.
Lieutenant Joe Sparger, who had come up for a breather on to the wings of the bridge, could see Trevellion striding from side to side of the bridge in an effort to see the screwflagman on the roof of the helicopter hangar. The manoeuvre was being watched by the hands on Goeben, standing smartly to attention while waiting for Icarus to clear the dockyard; Sparger could well understand Trevellion's feeling of annoyance at this conspicuous display of clumsy ship-handling. Seconds later, he felt the deck trembling beneath his feet: Icarus was steadying after the lurch caused by the correction of her swing. The yellow stonework of the arm, at one point precariously close, slipped behind. Sparger glimpsed Glorious' outline where she was still at anchor off Somerset Island. A light was winking from her bridge island, and the yeoman moved out to his signalling projector.
Until the yeoman reported that the next ship in the seniority stakes, Jesse L. Brown, was leaving harbour, Trevellion exercised his ship's company and himself. Icarus handled well, even in the stiff breeze: she was one of the last of the broad-beamed Leanders and was reputed to be a good seaboat. Trevellion did not reproach the first lieutenant over the series of minor mishaps, due almost entirely to inefficiency, which occurred during the exercises, but his air of apparent unconcern cost him some effort to maintain when a signal arrived from COMSTANAVFORLANT:
TO ICARUS INFO ATHABASKAN, GOEBEN, JESSE L. BROWN. MANOEUVRES BADLY EXECUTED. REPORT REASONS WHY TWO RATINGS WERE NOT IN RIG OF THE DAY WHILE LEAVING HARBOUR.
Trevellion frowned. ' Show it to the first lieutenant.' He then turned to Firebrace who was conning the ship with a nervous expression on his face: ' Stop together.' As Icarus lost way, he eased her into the wind to wait for the senior officer. Jesse L. Brown was creaming up astern, while Goeben was clearing the harbour entrance. The Canadian destroyer, Athabaskan, swept by, the blue NATO flag fluttering stiffly in the wind, the commodore's pendant flying proudly. Trevellion waited for Goeben to take station on Athabaskan, saw Jesse L. Brown's wake frothing as she moved up on Goeben. Leaving Five Fathom Hole to port, the ships adopted their cruising stations in order of seniority: they were dispersed over three miles apart, where they zigzagged independently to follow a mean-line-of-advance of 082° towards the Azores. Sparger moved out to the wings for a last look at the low-lying islands disappearing in the murk below the horizon.
Glorious and her group of replenishment ships would soon be threading their way out through the channeclass="underline" the carrier was invisible, but her group would be exercising tomorrow while they caught up with STANAVFORLANT.
The Senior Officer of STANAVFORLANT, the American Commodore Harry McKenzie, with whom Trevellion had spent a rushed half-hour on Saturday, was devoting today to drilling his new commanding officer. Communication exercises and action manoeuvring would take place all day. At ten-thirty, the clouds to the westward began to lift and patches of blue began to show. The wind moderated and the pounding of the ship improved to an easy motion, as she rose and dipped to the Atlantic swell.
Sparger felt the soft breeze, watched the heaving, dark blue mass of the ocean: it was a long passage that lay before them. He looked up as he saw the lookout pointing towards a helicopter coming up from the westward: one of Glorious1 Sea Kings. Sparger moved into the bridge.
'Glorious' mail-run, sir,' Neame was saying to Trevellion. ' I've warned the Flight Deck Officer.'
The captain brought his ship round, thirty degrees off the wind. The dark-blue helicopter hovered above the quarterdeck, lowered the wire from which dangled the mail-bag. Then she was away, swooping to port as she made for Athabaskan, whose upperworks were visible above the south-eastern horizon.
The first lieutenant was waiting patiently by the command chair.
'Yes, Number One?'
'When will you see defaulters, sir? I'm afraid I've got a difficult one.'
The captain hesitated, then replied:
'It's Sunday, First Lieutenant.'
'Tomorrow, then, sir?'
'Yes — before the RAS, when we'll be topping up with fuel. There'll be plenty of time, as I'm last in the queue.' He turned to regard his first lieutenant: ' What's the trouble?'
'Leading Stoker Fane and Leading Radio Operator Osgood, sir. Run in by the patrol last night.'
'Serious?'
'Could be, sir, though Osgood hasn't been in trouble for some time. He used to skylark a bit, before he was rated up.'
The yeoman was trying to catch the captain's eye, and Towke was also hovering in the background, a pile of bumph in his hands.
'Executive signal for the communications exercise, sir,' the yeoman broke in.
'A letter from the Admiral, sir…' said Towke at the same time. He resembled a penguin in his orange waistcoat and the blue anorak of his flight deck gear.
'What's it about?'
'Fane and Osgood, sir. Complaint from the shore authorities: a police report to the Admiral.'
Trevellion submerged his annoyance. He had quite enough on his plate…
'See me when this exercise is finished, and bring the Master at-Arms with you. I'll not have my ship brought into disrepute.' He turned to the navigator and took over the ship himself. The whisper of the breeze outside the bridge screen was the only sound at that moment.
Back in his cabin, Joe Sparger sighed as he pulled the chair up to his desk. He was beginning to feel his age. Theoretically the modern maintenance procedures were splendid: in reality, initiative in the younger ERAS and MEOS was being stifled. He disliked being a puppet and wondered how long the Fleet's complex machinery could be kept going in wartime when communications broke down.
As always, before settling down to the paper work he glanced at the framed photograph above his desk: Julie and the kids. They all were smiling at him, but the photograph had been taken too long ago. Frank was at university now and Colin might soon be following; fools, like their dad, they both wanted to become mechanical engineers. Whether he could recommend an MEO'S career for his sons would take a lot of thought… but in the meantime how the hell was he to keep the ship functioning safely if Centurion could not draft him replacements? His role seemed to be more training junior rates than operating dangerous machinery. 'Haven't got anybody,' was Centurion's invariable reply to Sparger's protestations — but he still had to take the can when disaster struck; an enormous responsibility was falling on his senior men. He wondered for how long their loyalty could continue to be relied upon. His best senior rating was leaving the service and Sparger knew that it was not only lack of money which was disillusioning these fine men; he sensed that they felt cheated, somehow — that they were searching for something more satisfying than money, for a motivation which their leaders, without the stress of war, seemed unable to provide.