Under the guns of the secondary battery, Polymytis’s captain submitted to a search.
“She’s not a very good collier,” the sublieutenant remarked when he came back aboard, much smudged. “Her bunkers are even harder to get at than ours… but she’s bung full of coal, and her engineering crew is German, I’d swear. White men, anyway.”
“Take her crew into custody, and put a prize crew aboard.” Collecting the collier might be enough. But it might not. The Goeben still might have enough coal to reach the Dardanelles, and she would surely be able to call on other colliers. Even a lame fox could kill chickens. He would have to bring her to battle.
The sea was near calm, but that wouldn’t last, not here at the meeting of the two seas. Already he could see the glitter off the water that meant the Aegean was about to live up to its name. The Etesian wind off Asia Minor crisped little waves toward him… and at day’s end it would blow stronger.
Unfortunately, it would blow his smoke to the south; if he stayed here, off Cape Malea, that black banner across the channel would reveal his presence to the Germans. How could he make them come this way, the only place where he could be sure his guns would reach them?
They must see nothing to alarm them. He would position three cruisers south of the passage, behind the crook of Cythera’s northeast corner, where the smoke would blow away behind that tall island, invisible. The other, with the destroyers, would wait well around the tip of Cape Malea, far enough north that their smoke would be dispersed up its steep slopes. He would put parties ashore who could signal when the Germans were well into the channel.
The signal flashed, and flashed again. Cradock smiled at the charts, and then at his flag captain. Souchon was as bold and resolute as his reputation. He had chosen the direct route, after shaking off Gloucester back at Matapan. Cradock had fretted over the signals from above that told of the exchange of shots between Gloucester and Breslau; the minutes when the Goeben turned back to support Breslau—when he feared she might turn away from the northern passage altogether—had racked his nerves, the more so as he could not see for himself what was going on.
But the Germans had gone straight on when Gloucester turned away, and now—now they were well into the passage.
Defence grumbled beneath him, power held in check like a horse before the start of a run. Below, stokers shoveled more coal into the maws of the furnaces; boilers hissed as the pressure rose. Thicker smoke oozed from the funnels, whirled away in dark tendrils by the wind. Cradock could almost see the engineering officers and engine crew, alert for every overheated bearing, every doubtful boiler tube. Gun crews were at their stations, the first rounds already loaded and primed, awaiting only the gunlayers’ signals.
But ships could not reach racing speed as fast as horses; he had to guess, from the positions signalled to him, the moment to begin the run-up. He wanted the cruisers to be moving fast when they cleared the island. So much depended on things he could not know—how fast the Goeben was, how fast she could still go, how Souchon would react to the sudden appearance of hostile ships in front of him.
Signals flashed down, translated quickly into Goeben’s position on the chart in front of him. She was not racing through; she was up to nineteen knots now, but keeping a steady course, well out from either side of the channel, Breslau trailing her. When… when…? He felt it, more than saw it in the figures on the chart. Now.
Defence surged forward, behind Black Prince, and ahead of Warrior. Cradock squinted up at the lookout. The Germans would be watching carefully; they had the sun over their shoulders, perfect viewing. But surprise should still gain Black Prince the first shot. She had won her vanguard position on the basis of an extra knot of speed and her gunnery record. He put into his ears the little glass plugs the Admiralty provided.
Across the passage, fourteen sea miles, he saw dark smoke gush from the funnels of the Duke of Edinburgh and the destroyers. In minutes, it would drift out across the passage, but by then they would be visible anyway.
For an instant, the beauty of the scene caught him: on a fair summer afternoon, the trim ships steaming in order under the rugged cliffs. Then his vision exploded in fire and smoke, as Black Prince fired her port 9.2-inch guns; the smoke blew down upon Defence coming along behind, and obscured his vision for an instant. Then Defence was clear of the point, and at that moment he saw the raw fire of Goeben’s forward turrets, just as Defense rocked to the recoil of her own. White spouts of water near Goeben showed that Black Prince’s gunners had almost found her range.
Too late now for fear or anxiety; his heart lifted to the raw savagery of the guns, shaking every fiber, the heart-stopping stink of cordite smoke, chocolate in the afternoon sun, blowing over him. Black Prince’s port guns fired again, and behind, he heard the bellow of Warrior’s, as she too cleared the point. The shells screamed on their way like harpies out of Greek legend.
The Goeben’s first shots rocked the sea nearby, sending up spouts of white. Had she picked out the Defence? She would surely try to sink the flagship, but he trusted his captains to carry on. His orders had been clear enough: “Our objective is to sink the Goeben, first, and the Breslau second.”
The German ship’s guns belched again; she could bring six of her ten 11-inch guns to bear on any of the three ships on her starboard bow. Cradock hoped her gun crews were not as good as he had been told.
White flashes of water, and then an explosion that was surely on the Goeben herself. She steamed on, but another hit exploded along her starboard side, even as her guns belched flame. Then a curtain of water stood between him and the German ships, and Defence rocked on her side, screws shuddering.
“Very close, sir,” Wray said. He looked pinched and angry. Cradock looked away.
“Yes, excellent shooting.” But his own crews were doing well, maintaining a steady round per minute per gun. Where were the destroyers in all this? They were supposed to have raced around the tip of Malea, laying smoke that would blow into the battle area and confuse the Goeben—he hoped. He looked ahead, to find dark coils of smoke already rolling over the afternoon sea, and the flash of Duke of Edinburgh’s guns… she was finally out from behind Malea, moving more slowly than his own ships. They had not wanted Souchon to see all that smoke until he was well into the trap.
Defence bucked a little as the sea erupted behind her, another near miss that dumped a fountain over Warrior’s bows. The guns rocked the ship again. Cradock looked at the chart, and his stopwatch. Black Prince should be near the point at which she was to start her turn, bringing her end on to the Goeben. He had worried over that point, on which so much depended. For three of his ships, it reduced by one the 9.2-inch guns that could bear on the Goeben… but it reduced the range more quickly, and that would, he hoped, be sufficient advantage.