Chapter 37
Lieutenant-Commander Francis Barrington waved to acknowledge the forward mooring crew’s signal that the boat was secured to the emergency buoy. After nearly forty-eight hours without sleep, he groaned a silent sigh of relief. However, this sigh of relief had been as nothing to his gargantuan release of pent up angst when the big, mean-looking silhouette of the USS Mahan (DDG-42) had hauled into sight early that morning with a mighty white bone in her teeth. The terrifyingly modern and warlike looking guided missile cruiser had slowed to a canter and — just for effect in case the Turkish crew of the old Second World War M-class fleet destroyer Mareşal Fevzi Çakmak had had any second thoughts about surrendering without a fight — turned two slow, menacing circles around both the prize and its captor, HMS Alliance with its automatic quick firing five-inch gun trained on the Turks.
Relieved of her trophy Alliance had independently made her best speed for Malta.
It had not been practical, safe or wise to attempt to remove any of the Turkish destroyer’s electronics suite or cipher equipment from her radio room; but Francis Barrington had had every code book and manual wrapped in waterproof seals, packed in cork containers to stop them sinking if they fell in the sea on the short boat ride back to the Alliance, and stowed below under armed guard in a corner of the control room where the priceless treasure had not left his or his Master at Arms’s sight.
He looked across the Creek to where the big wrecked submarine depot ship HMS Maidstone had settled on the bottom in a stinking soup of her own leaking bunker oil. All of Maidstone’s charges had been out at sea when the bombardment had commenced. The foremast of a minesweeper sunk on one side of the deep water channel into Lazaretto Creek and the fire-scorched flank of the depot ship testified to the violence of the Battle of Malta and the destructiveness of the salvoes which had screamed down into mercifully empty Sliema Creek, and into the midst of the handful of small ships moored alongside the Maidstone. The big depot ship had been hit by at least three armour-piercing six-inch calibre rounds, each of which had plunged into, through and out the other side of her before exploding. One of the shells had gone through several decks and exploded beneath her engineering spaces causing flooding so extensive that she had settled on the bottom within minutes. One of the other hits had demolished a landing craft moored alongside and started an oil fire which had gutted the forward third of the Maidstone. It was miracle that the huge, sitting target had only been hit by three large shells. Half of Manoel Island, hard hit in the American bombing raid in December looked like a Moonscape, and the streets around and leading down to Lazaretto and Msida Creek were bombsites now. The ruins still smouldered and the air still stank of burning.
To Francis Barrington who had been in Malta — and based in Lazaretto Creek — at the height of the siege over twenty years ago as a terrified sub-lieutenant, it looked as if he had never gone away. Two decades of renewal and rebuilding, of attempting to remake lives and to forget the nightmare of the early 1940s had been for nought. He had had nightmares for years after the war; now he was living those nightmares anew…
A launch wearing the Harbour Master’s livery bumped gently against the bulge of the Alliance’s pressure hull, and a man in a Commander’s uniform jumped aboard, then another man in civvies.
“Permission to come aboard, sir!” The officer shouted perfunctorily.
“Permission granted!”
A minute later Francis Barrington and the two visitors were crammed, very much in the fashion of three sardines in a can designed for two in the Alliance’s Captain’s claustrophobic bolt hole of a cabin aft of the control room.
Francis Barrington’s guests had come to take possession of his treasure.
Neither man seemed very grateful for his or his crew’s endeavours or remotely interested in hearing the account of his capture of a destroyer on the high sea. A word of thanks would have been nice; even if he had not so much captured as simply received the surrender of the old Turkish destroyer.
He tried to make polite conversation with his guests.
“Funny old world,” he observed. “The last time I set eyes on the Mareşal Fevzi Çakmak was back in 1942 when she was being towed into Gibraltar after a U-boat had blown off her stern. Of course, back in those days she was HMS Marne. I can’t wait to go onboard her and have a good look around. I shouldn’t be surprised if you can still see the join where they welded her new stern on, what!”
The visitor in the commander’s uniform, a fleshy middle-aged man with a receding hairline and large florid hands that suggested he had never done an honest day’s work in his whole life, eyed Barrington with suspicion.
His civilian companion was obviously uncomfortable in small spaces and constantly glanced at the bulkhead inches above his head.
“Presumably, every member of your crew knows about what you transferred across from the destroyer?” The Commander asked brusquely.
“I should imagine so, sir.”
“Do they or don’t they, man?”
“I don’t know, sir. But,” Barrington shrugged, “everybody will know by now that we brought something important back onboard from the prize.”
The Commander pulled out a folded sheet of paper and started to read aloud.
“Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean Fleet to Officer Commanding Her Majesty’s Submarine Alliance. Be advised that Alliance is hereby quarantined. Alliance will remain moored in Lazaretto Creek until further notice. All shore leave is cancelled until further notice. Officer Commanding Alliance may expect to be summoned ashore periodically but may not depart his command without an armed escort. Any man discovered to have communicated any information about the capture of sensitive materials from the Turkish Navy Ship Mareşal Fevzi Çakmak will be liable for prosecution under the Treachery Act (1940), The Official secrets Act (1911, 1920 and 1939) and the War Emergency Powers Act (1962 and 1963).”
Within minutes HMS Alliance’s treasure had been loaded onto the visitors’ launch and the submarine was officially ‘quarantined’.
Barrington climbed to the top of Alliance’s tall fin where he was shortly joined by his second-in-command, Lieutenant Michael Philpott.
“Heroes to lepers in five minutes flat, sir,” he complained cheerfully. “How long do you think we’ll be sitting here twiddling our thumbs, sir?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Number One.”
“Sitting out here in the Creek will be hard for some of the men.”
“I know.” It would have been even worse if Alliance had not so recently joined the 2nd Submarine Squadron. Few men of her complement of five officers and fifty-six other ranks had connections to the island, girlfriends and the like. Nevertheless, it was not going to be much fun for anybody if Alliance’s quarantine lasted any length of time. It was one thing being cooped up onboard at sea on patrol; another entirely killing time in harbour without the possibility of a run ashore.
The younger man — Philpott was eighteen years Barrington’s junior — gazed thoughtfully at HMS Maidstone. The Creek was rocky so the nine thousand ton depot ship had probably sprung several keel plates when she had settled on the bottom. Most of his personal kit — dress uniform and the like — was still in a locker somewhere on the slab-sided submarine depot ship. Moreover, it made him more than a little nervous to know that as there was only six or seven feet of water under the boat if there was another attack like yesterday’s, Alliance would not have the option of submerging to escape the incoming shells.