“There is activity on the deck of the San Miguel…”
Activity but precious little action.
The old ironclad might by now have attempted to warp sidelong against the hold of her anchor chains but obviously, nobody had thought about letting out a few fathoms of those chains, or of dumping a new anchor over the side so she continued to wallow in the path of the Weser, now burning from end to end and inexorably bearing down on her.
There was a small explosion near the bow of the Weser.
And a few seconds later, another on the stern well deck; thereafter, the twenty-millimetre ready use lockers containing ammunition for the raider’s anti-aircraft cannons began to cook off at regular intervals.
Finally, the clamour of ringing alarm bells drifted across the water as the Weser ran into the bow of the San Miguel. Instantly, there was the rattle of chains running out as the ironclad belatedly abandoned her forward anchor. Yet still, the old ship made no attempt to turn her shafts and back away from the burning merchantman, now fiercely burning, looming above her decks.
“She’s still anchored at her stern!” Peter Cowdrey-Singh muttered, not quite believing his eyes.
Finally, the San Miguel’s crew cut her stern chains.
By then it was too late, the ebb tide was pushing the bigger, much heavier Weser broadside on against the warship, and they were grinding rails, locked together.
HMS Achilles’s former Executive officer swore under his breath.
He would not have believed it, any of it unless he had just seen it. Not only could the San Miguel’s guns no longer bear on the Emden, it was odds on that the tide, and the fluky wind coming off the land would push both the Weser and the ironclad onto the sandbanks on the opposite shore of the bay.
By now the Weser’s fires were casting crimson shadows around the whole bay.
Claude Wallendorf turned and called: “RELEASE ALL LINES FORE AND AFT!”
He waited to hear acknowledgements.
“SLOW ASTERN STARBOARD! SLOW AHEAD PORT! FULL LEFT RUDDER!”
The ship began to gently reverberate as her turbines began to turn her shafts and her propellers stirred the mud and sand under her transom.
And, astonishingly, still nobody had fired a shot in anger.
Chapter 35
Monday 8th May
SMS Emden, San Juan Bay, Santo Domingo
With no specific duties to perform Peter Cowdrey-Singh had watched, to all intents, transfixed, by the Weser and the San Miguel’s slow-motion dance of death. It was not until some minutes later, as Claude Wallendorf fought to back the Emden out into the deep-water channel, that the Royal Navy man realised that very gradually, the ironclad’s guns were coming to bear on the cruiser as she swung around, locked together with the burning, slowly sinking commerce raider.
“Herr Kapitan!” He called lowly from the port bridge wing, where he had migrated to watch the ongoing drama. “I believe that the San Miguel’s forward guns will bear on us within the next sixty seconds or so!”
“Very good,” the German acknowledged bloodlessly. Who simply commanded: “Gunnery Officer! If we are fired upon return fire immediately, if you please!”
That was when the cruiser’s bow had grounded for the first time, some distance inside the marked channel where there should have been at least five and possibly as many as ten feet of water under her keel.
Oh, well, the former Executive Officer of the Achilles thought, that explains why the San Miguel moored so close to the other side of the inner channel!
There was no substitute for a little local knowledge!
The cruiser’s screws went half astern, her bow slid free, continued to swing, slowly to the east, across the tide. This of course, was where it would have been damnably handy to have had a couple of tugs pulling and pushing, and an experienced harbour pilot standing on the bridge beside Claude Wallendorf.
Notwithstanding, Peter Cowdrey-Singh was mightily impressed with the way the Kaiserliche Marine man was going about his business, unflappably, phlegmatically, with only the memory of how the small boats which had greeted his ship outside the port, had slowly led the Emden to her berth, to guide him. Having to retrace that tortuous passage through the shifting sand bars of what was a rarely dredged anchorage in the middle of the night, with the tide running fast, ebbing and the bottom reaching up for the Emden’s keel, all the while knowing that shore batteries and other ships could open fire on his vulnerable command at point blank range, was perhaps, the greatest challenge of Claude Wallendorf’s long career.
There was a flash of light and huge explosion, or so it seemed for a moment. One of the 3- or 4-inch casemate-mounted guns of the San Miguel had put a shell into the side of the Emden somewhere below where the Anglo-Indian had been standing.
Somebody grabbed him and hauled him back inside the conning tower; not that its seventy-centimetre-thick armoured carapace was going to keep out even a small calibre shell at a range of only a few hundred yards.
The ‘big explosion’ had actually been Turret Anton opening up with two of its three 5.9-inch rifles. As the hatch banged shut behind him the ship rocked as all three of Turret Bruno’s guns discharged.
Staggering to his feet, he squinted through one of the observation slits on the port side of the bridge just in time to see Turret Anton’s second salvo slam into the Weser and the San Miguel.
At a range of probably significantly less than four hundred yards the one hundred-and-twelve-pound armour-piercing rounds carved straight through the Weser’s thin-plated side and probably, the four or five inches of cemented steel protecting the San Miguel’s vitals. Had that armour been inclined to deflect shell impacts, or manufactured to the specifications of that fitted to the ships of the great powers at any time in the last forty years, it might have offered some small protection to the dozen or so heavy shells which hit her in the next minute.
As it was, it was safe to assume that practically every 5.9-inch round which struck home penetrated her outer carapace and exploded in her vitals.
There was a blindingly white flash from a gun near the old ironclad’s stern as the Emden’s fourth salvo, and first full broadside, with the guns of her aft Caesar Turret joining in, in the instant before the old ironclad’s whole starboard side lit up like a Roman Candle.
It was impossible to say where the massive detonation which ensued began; it was as if the whole ship, from the bridge to the taffrail just disintegrated in a giant, crimson-yellow fireball, and when the spots in front of Peter Cowdrey-Singh’s eyes began to clear there was nothing, literally nothing recognisable, left of the five thousand ton cruiser while nearby, the wreck of the still burning Weser – her whole port side now stove in – was slowly capsizing, practically already on her beam ends.
Chunks of wood and metal began to rain down across the inner bay, thudding into Emden’s upper works and driving the men manning her anti-aircraft guns scurrying, diving for cover.
On the other side of the bay searchlights began to play across the sky. It was as if the people over there thought there was an air raid in progress!