The broadcast would inform the Captain that he and the Executive Officer were already rounding up the newcomers by the time Hugo Montgommery told him the bad news. The Old Man didn’t expect his officers to sit on their hands when there was work to be done.
Further inside the anchorage a tanker down on her marks wallowed around her cables. A wisp of smoke rose from her single stack. Beyond her the long, low black shape of an ‘O’ Class diesel-electric submarine was creeping stealthily to sea. In the greyness of the morning the lights of Weymouth twinkled through the drizzle. They said the lights were coming back on in a lot of towns but it could never be as it was before; the fires of Hell had swept the old world away and it wasn’t coming back. In mute testimony to the new reality Talavera was replenishing her magazines a home port with the watch closed up at Air Defence Stations. What kind of peace was that?
The Master at Arms, a small veteran Chief Petty Officer with a broken nose and a ruddy, scarred complexion trotted up the steps to the bridge and reported while Peter was half-submerged in his dark foreboding. Legend had it that CPO ‘Spider’ McCann had once been the Mediterranean Fleet’s featherweight boxing champion.
The Bridge intercom buzzed angrily for his attention.
It was the Executive officer.
“Muster the new draft on the stern, if you please, Mr Christopher,” Hugo Montgommery commanded with what seemed like entirely genuine amusement.
“Aye, aye, sir.” Peter turned to the Master at Arms whose much abused face had remained unmoving during the short exchange between the two officers. “Let’s see if we can do this without delaying the replenishment evolution, if you please, Mister McCann.”
Talavera’s senior non-commissioned officer — technically junior to the greenest sub-lieutenant straight out of Dartmouth — had served with both the Captain and Hugo Montgommery before and enjoyed both men’s unqualified respect and trust. When Peter had reported onboard the ship in that now long ago age of reason before the world went mad a bare seventeen months ago, the Exec had told him that ‘there were only four people in Chatham who have the right to give the Master a direct order; CPO McCann’s wife, God, the Captain and on a very, very good day, me.’ Hugo Montgommery had also told Peter that Spider McCann was the first man in Christendom he’d want by his shoulder in a tight corner.
There was a loud metallic clunking thud on the deck behind B turret.
Instinctively Peter rushed to the side of the bridge, arriving just in time to see a mishandled 4.5 inch reload rolling towards the port rails pursued by two burly gunners’ mates. It seemed as if the shell was going to win the race, drop into the cold grey waters of Portland harbour until, when it seemed impossible to intercept the missile, one gunner’s mate fell on it as if he was tackling a fleet-footed left wing at Twickenham. Instantly, his companion fell on top of him and the wayward reload, instantly arresting both man and shell’s seemingly irresistible slow motion slide over the side.
Lieutenant Miles Weiss rushed to the heap of men and the now — thankfully — captured round. Peter could tell it was an HE, or ‘common’ reload. He allowed himself the comfort of a long, deep breath. Unfuzed or not, dropping a shell on a steel deck was never going to be an evolution that recommended itself to him as light entertainment. The Gunnery Officer, a keen, boisterous man, enthusiastically slapped both gunners’ mates on the back.
“Guns! Peter called when the big men had hauled themselves, and their prize off the deck. “What’s the score so far?”
“We’ve loaded forty star shell and four hundred HE so far, sir!” The other man yelled. “There’s another fifty or so HE to come over then we’ll start on the SAP. The chaps are getting handier now that we’ve got a good rhythm going!”
“Carry on!”
Talavera’s forward magazines had been designed to carry three hundred rounds per barrel. Minor modifications to bulkheads, mainly to strengthen and stiffen the forward third of the ship during her recent rebuild had reduced that capacity to between two hundred and sixty and two hundred and seven rounds per barrel. Talavera had been ordered to load forty star shell, four hundred and sixty high explosive, and five hundred semi-armour piercing rounds, over forty tons of ordinance in approximately four hours. That wouldn’t have presented an insuperable problem alongside an ammunition wharf in port but across the decks of two gently rolling ships, the one — RFA Sycamore — with a higher freeboard, it was a real struggle. It was only now as Miles Weiss’s men got their second wind that the operation was finally gathering momentum.
There were ninety minutes to go before Talavera cast off from the mooring buoys and went to sea.
Over five hundred rounds still to come aboard.
It would be a close run thing.
Peter Christopher made his way down to the enclosed conning bridge. He studied the Type 965 repeater. Long range traffic only. Satisfied, he rang through to the amidships CIC.
“Bridge here. Anything on the board?”
“No, sir. We’re picking up a lot of chatter from the Yanks. A lot of it is in the clear. All nearby friendly units are observing radio blackout as per Fleet standing orders.”
“Very good.” Peter had learned very early in his career that while some officers could be effective watch keepers while preserving a demeanour of glacial, calm inactivity, that he could not. He simply wasn’t built that way. He needed to keep moving, thinking, talking, checking and re-checking everything. He didn’t trust himself to assume anything. When he was officer of the watch the ship and everybody onboard depended on him being on his toes at all times. He rang down to the control station in the forward engine room. “Bridge here. Put the Chief on the line, please.” He waited. “I’m still waiting for a bunker check report,” he said tersely, continuing without waiting for a reply. “How long before we can light off number two boiler?”
The second of Talavera’s Admiralty 3-Drum Boilers would be ‘lit off’ in the next ten minutes and a ‘bunker report’ would be delivered to the bridge as soon as the rating with the report chit in his hand could reach the Bridge.
“Very good, Chief.”
Talavera had taken on six hundred and thirty-eight tons of heavy bunker oil at Portsmouth, about eighty-five percent of her maximum load. Earlier that autumn the ship had grounded briefly on two occasions while anchored in Fareham Creek during low tides and there was a small possibility she might have sprung a seam in her double keel, or suffered some other minor underwater damage. Bunker fuel leakage, contamination or excessive seawater ingress into the bilges might signify unseen damage.
So far so good. The short run to Portland to seaward of the Isle of White from Portsmouth hadn’t thrown up any significant mechanical defects and the hull seemed, on first inspection, as tight as a drum but it didn’t pay to take anything for granted. The hull was sound, there were no tell tale oil leaks.
A breathless, sweating junior Engine Room Artificer skidded to a halt before the officer of the watch, who took the clipboard clutched in the man’s right hand and studied the single sheet — which was only lightly smeared with light lubricating oil — intently for some moments.
The bunkers were 81 % full and sea water contamination was negligible.
There were eight inches of water in the Boiler Room bilge.
The Engine Room bilge was dry.
The bunkers were cleaned with sea water, there was always trace contamination.
There was always water in the Boiler Room bilge. The environment of the Boiler Room spaces generated heat, humidity and condensation by the bucket load and there was always a steam leak somewhere in the system. Eight inches seemed a lot but it equated to less than thirty minutes a day of pumping out.