There was a tired surge of laughter from around him; then back to throwing the buckets of water over the side. Becker found himself looking over the brutally-amputated bows of his ship. She was going forward again.
“Engineers? How are our engines?”
“Cooling slightly Sir.” He nodded. That had solved one problem but had it created another?
“Damage Control, what is the situation up forward?”
The reply came quickly. “Leakage is down a bit, Sir. Water still coming through but it hasn’t increased the way I thought it would.”
“Suction.” Another officer spoke quietly. “When we were heading backwards, the cut-off area acted like a transom stern. There was suction there, pulling the timbers outwards. Now there is pressure pushing them back together. It will mean that when the leaks start again, they will be worse, but until then, not so much.”
Becker nodded and suddenly looked through his binoculars. “There, in front of us. You see it? On the horizon? Land. Just another couple of hours, that’s all.”
Another officer looked. “Might just be cloud, Sir?”
“Perhaps, but for the men’s ears it is land ahead.”
It was. For the next hour, Becker saw the shadow on the horizon solidify and enlarge. It was land. It had to be the Faeroes. He saw something else as well; a small boat coming out to meet him. It took time to pull alongside, He saw it was a fishing boat, a sailing craft. He didn’t find that surprising since the Faeroes probably hadn’t seen diesel fuel for years.
“German battleship. Are you heading for Thorshaven?”
“We are, God willing.”
“Your destroyer told us where to find you but you cannot bring your ship into our harbor. You will block it when she sinks.”
“We do not wish to. We would beach her outside.”
“That is good. There will be other boats and men on shore to help your crew. Can you steer a course?”
“Not with accuracy. We are setting the rudder by hand. But we can try.”
“Set ten degrees to port. This will put you on to a sand beach. Your men will stand more chance there than on the rocks.”
“Very well.” Becker gave the helm order and felt Lutzow shift again. The island grew in front of him, quickly swelling in size. He had to make several more small changes of course to try and hold the line the Faeroese fishermen wanted but they managed it. Soon, he could see the beach, a small cove, sheltered, welcoming. Much better than he expected.
“Get everybody out from down below. Minimum crew for running the ship only. Everybody else on deck.”
“German battleship?” The voice came from the fishing boat again, still distorted by the loud-hailer. “We can take your most wounded if you wish. There are other trawlers coming out. If you lower your wounded down to us we will take them to Thorshaven.”
“Thank you.” Becker wanted to say more but he couldn’t think of the words. He was just too tired.
Slowly, Lutzow was surrounded by fishing craft. Her crew lowered the worst of the wounded down to the larger trawlers. More small craft were joining them by the minute, ready to take the survivors off when the sinking cruiser hit the beach. That wouldn’t be very long now. Becker could feel her getting more sluggish as the water filled her hull.
“Time to go. Engineers, full power from the diesels, the harder we hit that beach the better. Means we’ll be closer to dry land. What’s the tide?”
“High tide, Sir.”
“Good.”
There was a blast on Lutzow’s sirens and the ship started to pick up speed. The wooden false bow started to disintegrate as the water lapped at it but it really didn’t matter anymore. Becker felt the vibrations as the hull started to touch the bottom followed by the vicious slam as his ship grounded fully. The engines pushed her ashore, through the bottom sand and onto the rocks beneath. Eventually, she stopped, hard aground, barely fifty meters from the high tide mark. When the tide went out, she would be almost wholly exposed. Becker felt something else. As his ship had grounded, she’d changed. Something had gone from her. In his heart Becker knew the truth, Lutzow was dead. She’d got her crew to safety and she’d died doing it.
Alongside, the small craft were pulling men aboard, catching them as they climbed down from the decks and pulling them to safety. The little boats ran them ashore before coming back for more. Then Becker saw something he couldn’t credit. Groups of Faeroese Islanders were running into the sea, long chains of them secured by lifelines. They grabbed at the German sailors and manhandled them back to the beach, just as the same sailors had manhandled the buckets all through the night. Others waited on shore with blankets. They wrapped the survivors in them as they reached safety and rushed them off to be warmed and sheltered. Quietly Becker marveled. After the ruthless bombing the day before, it was almost too great a contrast to bear.
As custom demanded, he was the last man off. He even made a tour of the ship to make sure she was deserted down below. Then he came to the demolition switches. There he hesitated. The standing orders were to blow the ship up but he held his hand. It wasn’t the ship, the cold, empty stillness told him more clearly than anything else that Lutzow was dead. Whatever it was that made her a ship rather than a steel coffin, was gone. But her tanks were half full of oil. If he blew her up, that oil would wreck the fishing ground on which these people depended. They’d risked their lives in the freezing water to save his men; he couldn’t repay them by coating their island with a scum of fuel oil. He reached carefully down, disconnected the detonator and disarmed the scuttling system.
Back on deck, he dropped down into a fishing vessel, the one who had come out to meet them. Its Captain was staring at him.
“It is all right, Captain.” Becker spoke slowly. “The ship will not explode. Her tanks are half full of fuel oil; if your people can get it out, it is yours.”
The fisherman nodded and took his boat in, Becker marvelled at the skill with which the sailing ship was handled so close in. When its bow touched sand, he jumped off, involuntarily yelping at the coldness of the water that came up to his knees. Then, another fisherman grabbed him and pulled him out of the water on to the beach.
“There is somebody you must meet.”
The fishermen lead him to another figure. He wore a khaki uniform with an odd, boat-shaped cap without a peak, made of wool with a button on top and ribbons hanging down behind. The man turned around and Becker saw the Union Jack flash on his shoulder. “Colonel Ian Stewart 2nd Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Free British Army.”
“Captain Martin Becker, German Navy Ship Lutzow.”
“Captain Becker, I must advise you that you and your men are prisoners of war. However, due to the peculiar circumstances that prevail here, I will offer your men parole. There are no facilities to keep prisoners on this island and I would not wish to keep you all locked up in your destroyer.”
“You have our parole. I will order my men to cooperate. Colonel, my ship’s fuel tanks contain oil these Islanders will find valuable, I promised to them. You will honor my promise? They deserve much more than a few gallons of oil but we have little else to give.”
“Of course.” Stewart waved and men on the hills stood up. They had Bren guns and Becker realized just how easily this beach could have been turned into a bloodbath. “We will send you out when our supply ships arrive. There are too many of you to go out in one trip but we will get you all to Canada in time.”
“Supply ship?”
“Of course. We’ve been occupying these Islands for more than two years now. We have a supply run set up. Fast minelayer out of Churchill.