“Not Captain Kelly’s lookouts,” Wray said, grinning.
“Quite so. So when she turns, I expect her to pick up speed, to twenty-four knots or more, and be off the southern capes of Greece before dawn. Now—this is what I propose—” He spread the chart out and explained in more detail.
2130 hours.
Cradock was dozing in his cabin, taking what rest he could, when Captain Wray called him. “Signal’s just in from Gloucester, Admiral,” he said. “The Germans have turned, just as you thought. They were trying to jam the signal, but Gloucester kept sending. I took the liberty of informing Admiral Milne, but have received no reply yet.”
Milne, Cradock thought, would be sure it was a trick. Luckily Milne would still be at dinner, and unlikely to give a return signal until he had finished. Cradock didn’t want to talk to Milne about what he planned, and be told not to do it. “What’s her speed?” he asked.
“Nineteen knots,” Wray said.
“Odd,” Cradock said. “I expected a spurt. Souchon must want to evade Gloucester; that would have been the ideal time to do so.”
“She just turned.”
“Mm. Ask Gloucester to inform us instantly of any change in her course or speed. And set the squadron’s course to take us south to Sapienza behind Cephalonia and Zante.” If the German ships kept that speed, his ships could easily arrive at Sapienza well before them, and choose their best place to engage.
Within minutes, he felt the cruiser thrust into the gentle swell with more urgency. Far below, sweating stokers would be shoveling coal into the furnaces… coal he would have to replenish. His mind ranged ahead, to the location of colliers.
It was near midnight when Captain Wray tapped at his door. Cradock woke instantly, the quick response of the seaman.
“Another report from Gloucester, sir. The German ships have separated; Captain Kelly’s following the Goeben, and she is on the same course, at seventeen knots. Dublin’s trying to find them; she has two destroyers with her, Bulldog and Beagle.”
“Seventeen knots.” Cradock ran a hand through his hair. Why was such an admiral, with such a ship, crawling across the Mediterranean at a mere seventeen knots when he could have outpaced the Gloucester and been free of her surveillance? “He has some problem,” Cradock said. “He didn’t get coal—no, we know he got some coal. He didn’t get enough to go where he wants to go—he’s moving at his most economical speed to conserve it until he meets a collier somewhere. Or… he has boiler trouble.”
“You can’t know that, sir.”
He didn’t know it. He knew only that no man with a ship fast enough to shake a shadower would fail to do so unless something had gone wrong. And Goeben had been snugged away at the Austrian naval base of Pola for weeks before the war started. She could have been undergoing repairs… and those repairs could have been interrupted by the outbreak of war, just as his own ships’ repairs had been.
“And our position?”
“About eight miles off Santa Maura, sir, here…” Wray pointed out their position on the chart. “We’ll be entering the channel between Santa Maura and Cephalonia in the next hour. Oh—and Admiral Milne wants to know your dispositions.”
“I’m sure he does,” Cradock said, stretching. “So do the Germans. Signal Admiral Milne that we are patrolling. I’m going up on deck for a while.” Wray looked as he himself might have looked, had his admiral ever told him to send a false signal. But they were, he thought, following the orders Milne would have given—that the Admiralty wanted him to give—if Milne had but the wits to give them. They don’t pay me to think, Milne had said once… but they might pay a high price because Milne didn’t.
The moon swung high overhead. To either side, the other cruisers knifed through the water, pewter ships on a pewter sea, blackening the starry sky with smoke. Behind them, sea-fire flared and coiled from their passage. Ahead, he could see the signal cones of the destroyers, and the white churn of their wakes, the phosphorescence spreading to either side. To port, Santa Maura, Leucas to most Greeks, rose from the sea in a tumble of jet and silver, the moon picking out white stone like a searchlight. Southward, the complicated shapes of Cephalonia and Ithaca, with the narrow straight passage between them.
“Have the squadron fall into line astern,” he told Wray. The signal passed from ship to ship; the cruisers dropped smartly into line at four cables… his drills had accomplished that much. He hoped the gunnery drills had done as well. He noticed that the cones were all correctly hung. “Reduce speed if necessary, but not below fifteen knots.”
He thought of little Dublin, with her two destroyers, desperately trying to find the Germans by their smoke. She might be lucky, but she surely could not sneak up on Goeben in this clear moonlit night. The Germans could not fail to see her any more than he could fail to see the ships of his squadron. Perhaps he should send her to guard the Adriatic gate which he had left wide open. That made sense, but so did another plan. Let her go to Crete, where the Germans might have another collier standing by. At dawn, when he hoped to spring his trap on the Germans near the Peloponnese, the smoke of Dublin and her destroyers might make the Germans swing closer to the Greek capes.
He gave these instructions, and eventually—atmospherics, the radioman explained—Dublin acknowledged them.
August 7, 0230.
He had dozed again, his body registering every slight change of course, every variation in speed, while the squadron passed Santa Maura, Ithaca, the rugged heights of southern Cephalonia, the northern part of Zante. The tap at his door roused him instantly. It was Wray.
“Sir… I have to say I don’t like it.”
“What?” Cradock yawned as he checked the time. Two-thirty.
“At the speed Goeben is making, sir, she will not be at the Greek coast until late morning. We cannot bring her to battle in daylight; you said so yourself.” Wray stood there like someone who expected a vice admiral to have the sun at his command. Cradock yawned again and shook his head to clear it.
“Where is she now?”
Wray moved to the table and pointed out Gloucester’s most recent position on the chart. Cradock smoothed his beard, thinking. “It’s inconvenient,” he murmured.
“It’s impossible,” Wray said.
Cradock looked at him. Surely he could not mean what that sounded like. “Explain, Captain.”
“It’s what I said before, sir. She’s too fast, and her guns outrange ours. She can circle outside our range, picking off the cruisers one by one before they can get a shot.” Cradock frowned; was Wray seriously suggesting they abandon the attempt?
“And you propose?”
“To preserve the squadron for action in which it can have an effect,” Wray said. “We cannot possibly sink the Germans…”
“I think you’re missing something,” Cradock said, smiling.
“Sir?”
“If the Germans do not appear until late morning—as it now appears—then we have time to entrap them where their greater speed will do them no good.”
“But sir—she will see us if we’re in the Messinian Gulf. She can stand off Sapienza far enough—in fact it would be prudent to do so. We cannot fight her there.”