Further down the line, in HMS Peregrine’s mess, William Spence was witnessing one of the strangest sights of R-1 ‘s voyage so far, indeed one of the strangest sights in the whole British navy. Leading Seaman Carswell, with a full cup of coffee placed carefully atop a small silver salver, proceeded to carry out the first steps in the dance that had won him fame throughout the fleet as the only steward in the fleet who, leaving the galley with a full cup of coffee, could deliver it to the bridge unspilled, no matter how rough the weather. In the worst storms, with the litheness of a prima ballerina, fighting gravity against impossible angles, he was a sight to behold, as he began his trip toward the stairwells, his legs seemingly made of rubber, sometimes walking back, giving a few paces, then recovering the lost distance the next second with a short, fast run, the cup held aloft as if he himself were in a gimbals mounting. More than once, new lieutenants had lost a day’s pay by having an unofficial wager with another officer, waiting impatiently upon the news that Carswell had left the galley and was now on his way up, expecting the seaman would trip at least once on the way. But so far it had not happened, leaving Carswell with what the ship’s company called an unbroken number of “FCDs”—full cups delivered. Several crew had already written inquiring whether Carswell’s feat qualified for mention in the Guiness Book of Records. They hoped a reply would be waiting for them when they returned to their home base at Plymouth.
The Peregrine leaned hard aport as a starboard wave struck her, the well deck awash athwartships, the bursting white cloud of spray enveloping the bridge with a sound like hail. It would soon be a force eight, the bollards already covered in foam, water rushing down the decks like a spring runoff, spilling out through the stern scuppers and swirling about the aft twin Sea Dart launcher, the flow broken but not stopped by the Limbo mortar before pouring back into the sea.
Visibility was now down to two miles, more whitecaps evident as R-1 continued to plow ahead.
“Only time I’d like being in a submarine,” Johnson said in the galley, he and Spence having left spreading the Marmite sandwiches till last. “All this bloody rockin’ and rollin’ is for the—”
“Action stations!” came the voice over the “Tannoy,” the PA system, and before Johnson could pick up another slice of bread, he, Spence, and the cook could hear the sound of running feet in the passageway outside the crew’s mess. Spence had expected a lot of shouting from petty officers and the like, but what struck him was the lack of any harshly shouted orders, the ship’s crew reacting more like a well-trained sports team than men at war.
On the bridge, the sonar operator calmly reported, “Contact, bearing two oh five degrees.”
“Half speed,” ordered the Peregrine’s captain, reducing the noise of his own ship’s prop.
To help avoid giving away Peregrine’s position, her sonar was on passive, and so no range could be registered. But the captain knew that a good operator, knowing his own set and ship, often developed a reasonably good guesstimate. “Can you give me a distance, Sonar?”
“I’d say five thousand yards, sir.”
Quickly Peregrine’s captain looked up at the computer board, comparing the vector plot of R-1’s course and his present position. It put the noise about two miles away, at a wide angle from where the convoy’s screen subs should be.
“Contact gone, sir.”
“Completely?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Odd,” the captain said, turning to his number one. “Damned odd. Any thoughts?” He looked about the bridge-it was no time for pride. “Anyone?”
“Wreck, sir — old oil drum or something moving? I mean, sir,” he continued, “something hitting it — you know, rock slide or something—”
“Could be, Chief.
“Contact bearing two six one.”
“Go active,” commanded the captain. “All round sweep.”
“Aye, sir. On active. All around sweep.” Now the inside of the Peregrine’s bow began to twang as its hull-seated transducer, in effect two metal plates buckling under electric charge, sent the distinctive sonar pinging noise into the ocean’s depths, the operator turning the echo onto the bridge’s Tannoy, the sonar sweeping from zero degrees to 360 every two minutes.
“Contact. Bearing two six one. Range eight hundred yards. Moving fast… Contact. Bearing two six oh. Range seven six oh yards. No props noise, sir. I’d say a mine.”
“Torpedo motor?”
“No, sir. No beat count.”
Without taking his eyes from the sonar screen, the captain waited for the two seconds as the computer digitized all incoming information, telling him that whatever it was, was coming at them at forty miles per hour. Impact in 4.71 minutes — on the starboard side — and countermeasures giving him the IAVS— impact avoidance vector and speed.
“Notify all ships. Steering by IAV.” Unhappily he knew that none of the merchantmen had IAV capability. “By voice to transports. Plain language.”
“Aye, sir. To transports in plain.”
“Follow the ship in front of them.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The computer IAVs were entered into the Peregrine’s memory and she swung hard aport, her type eight steam/gas-combination-driven prop driving her at twenty-four knots, her decks now constantly awash as she heeled sharply to avoid impact.
“Same contact. One one seven degrees. One thousand yards.”
“Identify?”
“Negative. But different from the other.”
By the time the new IAVs had been spat out by the computer, it was too late for the Peregrine, the captain realizing it was not an isolated mine coming for them but a series, probably combination pressure/noise, triggered by the active pulse the Peregrine had just sent out. Like a man trapped in an ever-shrinking room, the IAVs were now seemingly accessories to the fact, for wherever the ship moved, there was another ping. Carswell had just placed the coffee in the captain’s special gimbals-mounting cup holder when Peregrine was hit. The second mine she had picked up on sonar was the first to explode as she turned into its path, the mine homing in on the keel at the forward end of the engine room, the second blast cleaving her well below her waterline at the stern and buckling the prop, lifting the destroyer’s stern completely out of the water. As her bow rose high, then fell, a breaker came rolling down under her like a leaden gray wall. All main fuses gone, the ship was in total darkness for several seconds before the auxiliary battery lights kicked in. In the galley the plastic crates of sandwiches slid en masse, but none were lost, as the three men were thrown against the cold ovens and one of the huge, shining mixing bowls. As part of a standby fire team, William Spence and, more reluctantly, Johnson moved to their station aft by the hangar door, where the battery charge lights had ruptured in the stern explosion. They heard a noise coming from outside — an enormous gushing sound like so many fire hydrants turned on, crashing in a sustained crescendo against the bulkhead — and felt the ship jerking starboard, then port, and back to starboard, her motion so violent, it seemed nothing less in the dim passageway than the enraged effort of some great leviathan caught in an iron trap thrashing to be free.