Chapter 2

Prime Minister Winston Churchill to President Roosevelt: Delay due to change already extends three weeks. Free French have got inkling and are leaky. Every day saved is precious…

The convoy had altered course again, swung to a track to compensate for the northward detour. The new course of 120 degrees would return them to the route as planned. Overhauling the mass of ships now, seeing masts and upperworks etched black against the flush of sunrise, Nick called Iris on the TBS and asked for details of survivors from the Rio Pride and the Dogger Prince.

Tony Graves had the watch. The crew had fallen out from action stations, and there was a general impression that the immediate danger of attack had passed. It was satisfying to have sunk that U-boat; this, plus the ending of a night that might have been a lot worse, was giving them all a feeling of well-being. He felt it himself, and saw it in others: in stubbled, strained faces materialising again as the half-light crept over sea and ships: you could detect it in their voices too, the tones of tired but contented men looking forward to their breakfasts.

It was partly reaction to strain. He understood this, having experienced it hundreds of times before, but it still provoked a twinge of guilt, to be cheerfully anticipating a meal and a sleep when only about ninety minutes ago a number of men had died, some very unpleasantly and all of them people who’d sailed in his, Nick Everard’s, protection.

Iris came through with her report. She had eleven survivors from the tanker, of whom two were unlikely to live much longer. Three who’d been picked up had already died of their burns. From the little Dogger Prince she had twenty-seven.

He frowned into the dawn. Overlaying the prosaic report, the figures, were other recent memories he’d sooner have forgotten. Sights, and sounds. He’d seen a lot of battle, in other ships and other seas, but here in the Atlantic the more or less constant strain, monotony of convoy routine and unrelieved discomfort made for a drably grim background that seemed endless: months, years of it, punctuated by moments of starker horror.

He glanced at Tony Graves, who had his glasses up and was sweeping the still-dark surface to port. Graves was a stocky, wide-shouldered man in his mid-thirties; he had a roundish face fringed at the moment with ginger beard. Nick asked him, ‘What induces anyone to go to sea in tankers?’

‘Often wondered that myself, sir.’ He added, ‘They’re well paid, of course.’

‘I’d bloody well hope so!’

Harbinger was closing in on the convoy’s rear, and dawn had become a silver brightness streaking up to the loosely-hanging underside of pinkish cloud. He wondered whether there’d be rain coming now, and guessed there might well be. It felt like it. Wind still dropping, down to about force four now, and the ship’s motion had become more regular – after four days and nights of being flung from end to end and beam to beam. The messdecks, he knew, would be in a filthy state; a destroyer’s living spaces always were after a bout of really bad weather. In other words, on most convoy trips, for at least half the year in these latitudes. There’d be water sloshing to and fro, rubbish and vomit in it, wet clothes in heaps as malodorous as dead cats. And the wardroom wouldn’t be all that much better.

TBS – a call from Goshawk… It was the voice of Jock Audsley, her captain, asking, Did we hear bumps in the night? Over.

Audsley, a lieutenant-commander RN, was the group’s senior CO after Nick.

‘Reply, “Affirmative. Score is now two-seven. Your turn next, please.”’

Congratulations began to crackle in from all of them. And it was a heartening achievement. It sounded like an uneven score, that 2-7, but when you appreciated that the enemy had only about two hundred operational submarines at this time, so that last night their overall strength had been reduced by one percent, it wasn’t at all bad.

The sea ahead was grey now instead of black. He could make out the stern-on shape of Iris just off the convoy’s starboard quarter, and on the other bow Viola zigzagging astern of the central columns. Bruce was broader on the bow, visible mostly by the churned foam under her pitching counter as she moved away to make room for Harbinger. Daylight coming, weather improving, and so far as anyone knew, no U-boats around.

‘Just as well we fuelled yesterday, sir.’

Graves had his glasses on the convoy, and he was referring to the fact that there was no oiler in it now. All four destroyers had replenished from the Rio Pride in the past twenty-four hours; the corvettes, who burnt less oil, would last out with what they had in their tanks. The more you had to dash about, the more fuel you burnt, so an interval of peace and quiet now would be doubly welcome.

He yawned, added, ‘And by tomorrow evening we should have air cover.’

Theoretically, they might have had it some time later today. Long-range cover by Liberators could reach up to 750 or even 800 miles from land bases. But Coastal Command had only one squadron of Liberators, and the normal range of Atlantic air patrols was about 450 miles. The U-boats’ technique was to locate their targets, shadow them until they were entering the aircraft-free zone, then close in and attack until they were about to leave it.

Mike Scarr came up, stared morosely at the sky, shook his head. There were no stars visible, so he’d get no dawn fix from them. Nick said, ‘You can get it down again, pilot.’

‘Yes.’ The navigator turned to him. ‘May I make a suggestion, sir?’

‘If it’s a good one.’

‘For the sake of convoy morale – parade the prisoners through the columns? Put ’em on the foc’sl, and steam up through the convoy?’

‘I’ll – think about it.’

‘Sir.’ Scarr left the bridge; and Nick found two reasons for disliking the idea. One was that it was the sort of thing a German might do. The other was that it might be making too much out of the destruction of one U-boat. It would be much better if such successes were to be accepted as routine, part of an escort vessel’s daily work. In fact it would have to become so, if this battle was to be won.

‘I don’t think I’ll parade our prisoners.’

Graves said, ‘Must say, I thought it was a lousy idea, sir.’ Graves lowered his binoculars. ‘We’re about in station now.’

‘And I’ll leave you to it.’ Nick told him, ‘That was a very well-placed pattern, incidentally.’

A laugh: ‘Have to get lucky sometimes. Thank you, sir.’

Modest old former cornflake manufacturer. He was too modest, Nick thought, sometimes, too content to stay in the background… But now, breakfast. Then some sleep. Just as he was about to leave the bridge, the bell rang from the W/T office, and Signalman Bloom jumped to the voice-pipe: ‘Bridge!’

Cocking his ear to it. Bloom was about twenty: pink-cheeked, with dark stubble blue-black on his jaw. An HO – Hostilities Only – rating, he’d worked in his father’s grocery business until he’d been called up. He turned from the pipe and told Nick, ‘From Admiralty, sir, “D/F bearings on four-nine-nine-five KCs indicate U-boat west of convoy was reporting your position at oh-six-oh-one stroke A,” sir.’

0601/A meant 0501 by ship’s time. Convoy and escort were keeping Greenwich Mean Time – Zone Z, not A. The Admiralty tracking room’s information therefore was that a U-boat astern of the convoy had been transmitting a report of it just twenty minutes ago. At that time the convoy had already settled on the present course of 120 degrees: so if that U-boat’s observations had been accurate, others at sea and also Admiral Dönitz’s submarine headquarters in France would know where it was now and have a good idea of where it might be tonight.

On the other hand there might not be any U-boats to the east and southeast – except a few on passage to or from patrol, which might not be easily re-deployed now. Nor was there any certainty that if there were some they’d be ordered to do anything about it. This wasn’t the only convoy at sea in the North Atlantic; the enemy had made a strong attack on it last night and lost two of their number in the process, and there wasn’t so much of the air gap left to traverse. They might easily decide to concentrate their attentions elsewhere, perhaps against some less well defended convoy.

They were like rats: they liked easy pickings.

Graves was looking at him quizzically.

‘Think they’re still after us, sir?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’ He nodded to the signalman. ‘Put it on the log when it comes up.’ He told Graves, ‘I’ll be in my hutch. Send word to Foster I’d like some breakfast, will you?’


A kind of skinless sausage called a Soya Link, with fried bacon and fried bread: bread and marmalade: coffee… The aroma of the coffee was so good it made him smile.

‘Thank you, Foster.’

PO Steward Charley Foster nodded. ‘Not a bad night’s work, sir, was it?’

‘There’ve been worse… What’s it like aft?’

‘We’re getting ourselves to rights now, sir.’

‘Are the Hun officers behaving themselves?’

Foster snorted: he was a short man with a leathery seaman’s face; you wouldn’t have taken him for a steward. He said, ‘GM ‘ll see they do that, sir.’ GM stood for gunner’s mate, and meant PO Hacket. ‘They was complaining there wasn’t room enough for ’em in there. He told ’em they could belt up or they’d get a couple more blokes in with ’em – their choice, like.’

‘Good.’

Foster touched the tray. ‘I’ll leave this till later, sir, shall I? Dare say you’ll be gettin’ your ’ead down.’

He’d have it down in about three minutes flat: just as soon as he’d gulped down this food… He pulled off the jacket of his purloined RAF flying suit, and kicked off his seaboots. The strip of towelling he’d wrapped round his neck was soaking wet, and so were the shooting mittens which had already been taken away by Foster. There were dry spares in here. Sitting down to eat breakfast, he was wearing the flying suit’s trousers and a white submarine sweater and oiled-wool seaboot stockings, all over silk pyjamas which when he’d bought them had been called pajamas – three months ago, in New York. Under them he had on a string vest and long johns. There was no point in being colder or wetter than you had to be, when whole nights had to be spent on a bucking, sea-swept bridge: it was in the best interests of the ship and the convoys she escorted that he should not be.

This sea-cabin, below the bridge and adjoining the plot, was about the size of a large cupboard, most of its space occupied by the narrow, high-sided bunk with drawers under it. There was a small corner washbasin and a table that flapped up on hinges from the bulkhead. Over the head of the bunk was a voice-pipe to the bridge, a telephone to the plot and the RDF office, and an illuminated repeater from the gyro compass.

He’d eaten all the food and drunk the coffee. To hell with shaving: U-boats permitting, there’d be time for it later. He climbed on to the bunk, over the high lee-board which was there to stop him being flung out of it in weather such as they’d had in the past few days. Now, the motion was so regular that it would be soporific. And the most pleasant way he knew of falling asleep was to think about Kate. Not of the worry, of Kate at sea at this moment, but of Kate in England, the daydream of going on leave and having her with him…

Asdics pinging: he could hear it all the time, that constant pulsing, high-pitched probe, keening into the ocean depths. Even in his sleep, if it found a contact and an echo came back, it would bring him instantly awake. There were other background sounds as well: from time to time the voice-pipe funnelled down a helm order, and more distantly there’d be the quartermaster’s response as the ship kept up her irregular zig-zag across the convoy’s rear. If he’d opened his eyes he’d have seen the lubber’s line shifting around the glowing face of the gyro repeater, two feet above his pillow; but there was no need to look, you felt the turning motion anyway, and the list as the wheel went over.


Nearly a thousand miles southeast and two hours later – Big Ben, visible from the window of his office rising above a mist lifting from the quiet Thames, showed London’s time as 0849 – a tall, slightly stooped man, white-haired and dressed in the uniform of a captain RNVR, leant forward to slide a sheet of paper across a desk.

‘We’ve narrowed it to a choice of three, sir.’

‘Quick work, Cruance. Excellent.’

‘It’s been a matter not only of the individuals’ experience and suitability, but also – rather complicatedly – of the present location of the various groups, which of them might be split up at this short notice and still get down there in time – and so forth…’

‘Yes.’

Aubrey Wishart, rear-admiral, looked as if he’d been at his desk all night. He certainly hadn’t shaved. He blinked, tired eyes scanning the typed summary. They sharpened as he came to the third name on the list.

‘Everard? Nick Everard’s commanding an escort group now?’

‘Yes. Destroyer called – Harbinger.’

‘Sit down. I wonder how the devil—’

‘Here’s some detail of his recent appointments.’ Cruance selected it from other papers in his file. ‘Do I gather you know him, sir?’

‘Extremely well. Since – believe it or not – 1918, in the Dardanelles. But I last saw him in Alexandria, in—’ Wishart passed a hand over his eyes – ‘well, only months ago.’ He read the notes: Cruance sitting back, watching, noticing three stained cups-and-saucers on the desk and a heaped ashtray, guessing that Wishart had been here most of the night. The admiral said, ‘Everard’s our man. If anyone alive could make a success of that job…’

‘Would he be – well, intended to – er – achieve success, sir?’

The blue eyes lifted. Tired, but also grim.

‘What do you mean?’

Cruance showed surprise… ‘Only that – that this is intended to deceive the enemy, and must surely incur exceptionally high losses – at least, if they take the bait—’

Wishart said thinly, ‘The point is that if anyone could – pull it off, with minimal losses of ships and lives – and incidentally also come out of it alive himself—’

‘Quite.’

Wishart mimicked him: ‘Quite…’ Cruance’s eyes steady, thought behind them: they were the eyes of a man accustomed to listening while his brain selected and interpreted… Wishart asked him, ‘Is that how you used to look down at the poor sods from the bench, or whatever—’

A twitch of the lips… ‘I do assure you, admiral—’

‘Everard’s a personal friend of mine, don’t you understand?’

‘Well, of course—’

‘He’s also so plainly the man for this job that it would be wrong of me to pick either of the others because of that friendship. What counts is the success of the main effort – the biggest and most complex operation ever mounted yet, and the most vital, with many thousands of lives at risk – not just a few – and aimed at changing the whole course of the war—’

‘I know. I do understand. Of course…’

‘Well, fix it, will you? Everard, and forget those others. You’ll need to get on to Derby House in Liverpool, C-in-C Western Approaches.’ Cruance was half way to the door when Wishart spoke again. ‘Are you free for lunch today?’

‘Why, yes—’

‘All things being equal, twelve forty-five? My club? I’d like to tell you some stories about Nick Everard…’


‘Captain, sir?’

A bridge messenger – Holloway – was in the doorway of the sea-cabin, cold air driving in. Waking, Nick realised there was still less motion on her now, that conditions tonight would be entirely different for both attackers and defenders.

This was the second time he’d woken. The first had been after only about thirty minutes, when he’d come-to as sluggishly as a corpse to be told through the voice-pipe that Prunella had reported an asdic contact. It had turned out to be a school of fish.

Blinking at the messenger. This wouldn’t be urgent: urgent calls came through the pipe.

‘What is it, Holloway?’

‘Lieutenant Scarr’s compliments, sir, and we have a Focke-Wulf in company.’

‘Damn.’

‘Yessir.’

Nodding, from the doorway. Holloway had been starting in the building trade: apprentice bricklayer, something of that sort.

‘I’ll come up.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’

The door clicked shut. Time, eleven-twenty. Course, 145 degrees – southeast, the starboard leg of the zigzag. He needed a pee and a shave, but the shave would have to wait. As he arrived in the bridge, Scarr pointed: ‘There it is, sir.’

A familiar and thoroughly unwelcome sight. Like a limping, damaged moth, out of range and close to the horizon, circling. But if only there was some way to damage it… There would be, if one new idea that had been mentioned recently became reality. It was a scheme to fit merchant ships with launching gear for a single Hurricane. If this convoy had one with it now, the fighter could be fired off to drive away or shoot down the Focke-Wulf, after which it would ditch near one of the escorts and its pilot would be picked up, to fly another Hurricane another day. He’d need to be tolerant of cold water, of course. But it was a very good idea, because there’d never be enough escort carriers to go round: and here and now all you could do was watch the thing circling the convoy, its crew as safe as houses while they sent out a stream of information: position, course and speed, size of the convoy, number and disposition of its escorts…

‘Frustrating, sir, isn’t it.’

Mike Scarr, his navigator, scowling at it. He was a tall, bony young man with a shy manner and apparently an unfailing supply of attractive girlfriends. Graves had expressed the view – standing with Nick in a corner of Harbinger’s wardroom during a drinks party they’d given in Liverpool, watching young Scarr effortlessly monopolising the best-looking of several pretty Wrens – that he thought the navigator aroused maternal instincts in them. But there’d been nothing in the least motherly about that girl… Graves was jealous, of course. Nick had met Mrs Graves, and he wasn’t at all surprised. He took the signal log from Wolstenholm, and leafed through a few routine messages that had been added to it during the forenoon. There was only one that was of interest, another from the Admiralty tracking room, with time-of-origin 1025/A, reading, Bearings on 4995 KCs at 0950/A indicate U-boats gathering eastward of you.

The Focke-Wulf was passing round astern now. Distant and inaudible, giving the impression it had nothing to do with the plodding convoy. But its radio man’s morse key would be tapping, tapping…

‘Why wasn’t I shown this one?’

Scarr moved over to peer at the sheet of signal pad with that message in a telegraphist’s blue-pencil scrawl.

‘We did consider it, sir. That was in Chubb’s watch. But you’d only just turned in again, and he didn’t think you’d want to be shaken for it. He asked me – the first lieutenant had his head down too – and I agreed with him. I’m sorry, if—’

‘No. You were right, I suppose.’

Because if he’d been shown it, he still wouldn’t have done anything about it. It was rather a borderline case though, and it was very important that they shouldn’t hesitate to rout him out if there was the slightest chance he’d need to know and act on such a signal. Scarr added diffidently, ‘It seemed to me that as it gave no distance, also that “eastward” might be quite vague, and our mean course now being nearer southeast than east anyway—’

‘You were right.’ He handed the log back to the signalman, lifted his binoculars again and focused them on the Focke-Wulf now dawdling up the starboard side – safely out of gun-range… ‘Do we know where we are?’

‘There’s a reasonably good fix on the chart, sir, by D/F, and I’ve run on from it for the noon position.’ He glanced up at heavy, lowering cloud. ‘No hope of anything much better, I’m afraid.’

No chance of using his sextant, he meant, no sight of sun, stars or moon in prospect. Rain still held off, but plainly threatened. The sea was lower, smoother, and conditions tonight would be easier for the U-boats than they had been lately. They’d have preferred some moonlight, though: for the surface ships, who were fitted with RDF, there was more advantage in darkness.

Nick checked the time: because at noon every ship in convoy hoisted flags giving that ship’s own estimate of the position in latitude and longitude. The signals were supposed to be hoisted simultaneously, like a sudden showing of cards face-up, and there was an element of rivalry in it… Scarr had seen him glance at his watch; he confirmed, thought-reading, ‘Signal’s already bent on, sir.’

And the Focke-Wulf seemed to be departing. Having seen all there was to see, and relayed the information to its clients.

‘Captain, sir?’

Bruce Hawkey, Harbinger’s engineer officer, was at his elbow. Hawkey was a lieutenant (E) RN, a graduate of the naval engineering college at Keyham. He was in white overalls, and offering Nick a sheet of signal pad with figures pencilled on it.

‘Fuel state, sir.’

It was routine, a report of oil-fuel remaining at midday. Similar reports would be flashed from all the other escorts.

‘All well down there, Chief?’

‘Except for the usual problems, sir. Nothing a month in dock wouldn’t solve.’

‘In about a month’s time, we might get ten days. If we’re very lucky.’

There were still not nearly enough ships for the work. Even when there was nothing out of the ordinary going on, every destroyer, sloop and corvette that was three-quarters fit was needed at sea. When something big was happening – like a Murmansk convoy, that deadly delivery-run that was keeping the Russians in the war – Atlantic resources were invariably stretched beyond the limits of effective coverage. Hence the difficulties of getting a group like this one together and keeping it together. The looming danger was that the U-boats might get the upper hand before this situation could be improved: U-boats were being churned out like sausages from the German shipyards, and they were getting new weapons too – new types of torpedo, for instance, and new evasive devices, and there were even new, deeper-diving types of U-boat. Some recent Intelligence summaries didn’t make cheerful reading.

Hawkey, leaning against the side of the bridge, lit a cigarette. A hooked nose matched his surname: strangers tended to assume it was a nickname. He murmured, gazing skyward, ‘Rain about, would you say?’

Scarr grunted as he checked a bearing. Hawkey asked him, ‘Did I hear we had a visitor?’

The Focke-Wulf, he meant. It had left them now. And at this stage the convoy wasn’t in a position where any evasive change of course could be large enough to be useful. For one thing, nobody knew exactly where the threat was – as Scarr had pointed out, ‘eastward’ could be a vague indication – and for another, even if the convoy did alter course now, the odds were that in a few hours they’d be found by another airborne snooper who’d update its predecessor’s reports.

The engineer muttered, ‘I suppose that means we’re in for another night of it.’

Matt Warrimer, with young Carlish as his assistant OOW, came up while the position flags were still flying and took over from Scarr for the afternoon watch. Warrimer towering over the shrimp-sized sub-lieutenant. Carlish had only recently been promoted from midshipman, and would need a lot more experience before he’d qualify for a watchkeeping certificate and be entitled to stand watches on his own. Then there was a visit from Mackenzie, the doctor, reporting on the condition of two German prisoners who’d been hit and wounded in that brief flurry of gunfire. And presently Tony Graves came up, accompanied by Mr Timberlake, the torpedo gunner, who had an account of depth charges expended and remaining. Timberlake was twitchy with anxiety.

Nick studied the figures. ‘Looks all right to me.’

The gunner’s eyes bulged. ‘Sir – you say all right, but—’

‘Guns, it’s one of your idiosyncrasies, whether or not you’re aware of it, that as soon as we’ve fired one pattern you start worrying about not having enough left.’

Warrimer muttered from the binnacle, ‘Like an old blackbird counting its bloody eggs.’

Carlish sniggered, and CPO Bearcroft turned away to hide his grin. Timberlake did look like some kind of bird. Graves growled, ‘Enough from you, Matt.’

‘Sorry.’ Stooping to the voice-pipe. ‘Midships.’ Nick told the Warrant officer, ‘We’ll get by with what we have, Guns, don’t worry. Tonight ought to be the last busy one, for this trip.’


An Admiralty signal during the afternoon told them: Aircraft was reporting and homing U-boats towards convoy at 1245/A. It wasn’t news, but it might have been if the Focke-Wulf hadn’t been so plainly visible. In fact, visibility now had begun to deteriorate; a light, cold drizzle was falling, blurring the horizon and making binocular work more difficult. Drizzle had thickened into rain by the time the next warning arrived, in the first dog watch: D/F bearings on 4995 KCs indicate U-boats establishing patrol line approximately 40 miles ahead of you.

Scarr murmured as he plotted it on the chart, ‘Have to admit they’re hot stuff, sir, those characters in the tracking room.’

No-one could have denied it: the Admiralty’s tracking room had been supplying accurate and useful information to the convoys for a long time now. The fly in the ointment was a suspicion that the enemy might be intercepting and decoding at least some of the signals, possibly all of them. Three years ago the Germans had had all the British naval codes and cyphers – until the Admiralty had woken up to it, and changed them – and there were signs they might have made a fresh breakthrough.

Leaving the chart-room, Nick thought about this new assembly of U-boats. Forty miles ahead meant just under six hours’ steaming for the convoy. The signal had originated at 1650 ship’s time, so taking the information at its face value you might expect to be in U-boat territory at about 2230. On the other hand there was no reason to suppose the reported patrol-line would be static: it would more likely be advancing towards the convoy. And suppose some German staff officer in U-boat headquarters had a transcription of this Admiralty message on his desk right at this moment: wouldn’t he order his pack to start moving west?

It was a distinct possibility. So, cut the interval by a couple of hours – and sunset might be the time. As the light went, it could start.

In the bridge again, Nick climbed into his tall seat, thumbed tobacco into a pipe Kate had given him, pondering meanwhile on the changed conditions that would apply tonight. This low, smooth swell, for instance, and rain that was not only heavy now but looked to be set in for the night. Who’d profit most from lousy visibility? Well, whoever foresaw it, laid plans to take advantage of it…

And there was a thought!

In the act of lighting his pipe, crouching for shelter from the rain while the match flared in wet, cupped hands, he’d stopped, forgetting what he was doing, the match fizzling out while cold dampness seeped down below his neck-towel and one thought triggered another and what had started as a vague idea began to harden into a line of action, into orders he’d have to transmit between now and sunset.


Dusk wasn’t far away. There’d been no signals or new developments since he’d re-deployed his destroyers, explained his ideas to the commodore and alerted the corvettes to the action he required of them. The convoy was now steering a mean course of 100 degrees.

Harbinger was three miles ahead of the central columns. Another three miles ahead was Goshawk, with Bruce four thousand yards to port of her and Watchful the same distance to starboard. Daylight was fading: there was no horizon to be seen now, only the surrounding curtain of rain.

HF/DF had been silent. If the U-boats were out there – and you could bet on it – they weren’t talking to each other. They’d probably done whatever chatting was necessary earlier in the day, when the Admiralty had heard them; they’d be dived now, Nick guessed, listening for the sounds of approaching ships. If they heard what they were expecting to hear, just as the light went altogether and gave them the cover they’d need for surface action, they’d imagine they had it cut-and-dried.

All this was guesswork, of course. And in a new kind of war, or at any rate a kind of warfare in which weapons and systems were constantly evolving, new tactics had to be tried before you could assess their worth. This ploy tonight, for instance, was full of risks. For example – if the U-boats were not all out there ahead: if there were some converging from the beams, while he had three of his four destroyers deployed six miles ahead…

Asdics weren’t all that reliable, either. Dived U-boats could slip under, dipping deeper to pass under a destroyer screen, rising again astern of it with the slow-moving, bulky merchantmen at their mercy.

Chubb was conning the ship, Graves loitering in the doorway of the asdic cabinet. Graves wasn’t happy with this plan: he’d argued, quietly and sensibly, and when Nick had countered his arguments he’d surrendered, though still (Nick thought) unconvinced. Scarr, on the other hand, had been very much in favour of it. Nick would have been happier if it had been the other way about: young Scarr was an efficient navigator and a good destroyer officer, but his comparative immaturity would tend to make his judgements less sound than Graves’.

Not that it made the slightest difference. It was your own judgement you had to go by. He’d only opened the idea to general discussion to see if any of them might come up with some point he hadn’t thought of. It was good for them, anyway, to know what was being done and why.

He thought, with his glasses up and sweeping slowly, carefully across the bow, passing over the very small stern-on shapes of the other three destroyers – they were already as indistinct as thumbprints on a dirty window – It probably wouldn’t work a second time

The question was, would it work this time?

Because this was no kind of game. The stakes were lives, ships and cargoes… Too late now to pull back. He’d set it up, the lives were at risk, the ships were targets, and if he’d been right the action might start at any minute. A change of mind now could be the worst thing of all: if you faltered, tried to re-deploy at this stage, you could get really caught…

But if it failed? If tonight saw half the convoy lost?

He lowered the glasses, to dry their front lenses yet again. Aware of Chubb’s quiet helm orders behind him, but not really hearing. Harbinger listing as she turned to a new leg of the zigzag. Asdics pinging, RDF aerial on the foremast turning steadily, the set’s narrow white beam sweeping around the poached egg down below, painting-on dark blips for the three ships ahead and for Gilliflower close to the convoy’s mass astern. Here in the bridge half a dozen pairs of binoculars probed the darkening, streaming surroundings for the dark loom of an enemy or the white feather of a periscope…

The rain enclosed and quietened a stretch of ocean that seemed empty.

Perhaps he’d tried to be too clever, and complicated what might really be a simple, straightforward situation. If he’d accepted that Admiralty signal without drawing further conclusions of his own, accepted that the encounter would take place at about 10.30 pm… Perhaps he should have: and perhaps he should pull those three ships back, put all four destroyers back in station around the convoy?

He’d dried the glasses again, and he was pushing back a wet sleeve to check the time, when the TBS burst into sudden, loud excitement. Goshawk – reporting from her position three miles ahead, Surface contact bearing one-two-four, six and a half thousand yards, attacking

He hadn’t got as far as seeing what time it was. It didn’t matter a damn now either. He had his glasses up again: Goshawk would be cracking on speed, readying her guns and depth charges. And thank God, the enemy was here, where he’d expected him!

TBS again: Bruce, now – reporting urgently, Surface contact one-one-five, seven thousand yards, attacking!

Those had been divergent bearings, clearly two separate targets. It looked very much like the real thing… He told Chubb, keeping his tone even and unexcited, allowing himself the deceit of letting them all think he’d had no doubts at all, ‘Come to one-two-oh degrees. Two hundred revolutions. All quarters alert.’ Two hundred revs would give about nineteen knots. At any higher speed, asdics wouldn’t have been any use.

Those U-boats had to be put down, and plastered with depth charges: kept down, kept busy and deaf, confused. Ideally, of course, destroyed: but the priority was to get the convoy past them – intact, over this last hurdle…

TBS again, as Harbinger surged ahead: it was Watchful reporting, U-boat dived on bearing one-one-oh range seventeen hundred yards: attacking…

Baxendale must have got that one on his RDF screen suddenly at close range: he’d have been in the process of turning to attack before he’d had time to think about reporting it. It might have just surfaced – then seen the spot it was in and pulled the plug again… But all destroyers up there had targets now, and Harbinger was moving up to support them. It wouldn’t matter if there were several more, so long as they were all forced down, blinded, deafened by racing screws and exploding charges. He had his glasses up, sweeping the milky-dark surface ahead: it wouldn’t be any surprise to find one surfacing, thinking it had passed under the screen and was inside now, with the convoy exposed to its torpedoes. Gunfire out on the starboard wing, Watchful’s bearing: everything was happening at once, and in a closely concentrated field of action – the U-boats had been taken by surprise, as the convoy might so easily have been.

Almost time for the main event, now. Give it – oh, say five minutes, just to make certain—

Asdic bell: and Garment’s high shout of ‘Contact, contact!’

Graves called, ‘Red two-four, sir, range fifteen hundred!’

‘Port ten.’ He slid off his seat. ‘I’ll take her, Sub.’

‘Confirmed submarine contact, sir. Moving left to right.’

‘Midships.’ He was at the binnacle, displacing Chubb. ‘Depth charge settings one hundred and fifty feet.’ Because this German would have gone deepish, but probably not all that deep: he’d have been intending to come up again soon for a shot at the convoy… ‘Steady as you go.’

‘Bearing oh-eight-four, range thirteen hundred!’

‘Steer oh-eight-oh. One-sixty revolutions.’

More gunfire eastward. Then a deeper rumble: depth charges… There’d be no TBS chat from the corvettes, except in emergency: if there were U-boats on the surface in listening range, there’d be nothing for them to pick up, except the brief exchanges between the destroyers, and those wouldn’t lead them to the convoy. Besides which, any surfaced U-boats would be blinded too, before much longer.

‘Chief Yeoman – by light to the commodore, “Starboard now please”… Number One, I’ll turn up this bugger’s wake.’

‘Target course three-four-oh, sir!’

He heard the clack-clacking of the eight-inch Aldis as Wolstenholm passed that pre-arranged signal to the commodore. Nick had left it open, whether it would be to port or starboard, but either way it would be a double emergency turn, two successive swerves of forty degrees each time. The convoy would end up steering due south. Daphne and Iris would be in the lead, Gilliflower and Prunella to port, Viola and Aquilegia to starboard: Daphne’s captain, Lieutenant-Commander Charles Rose RNVR, would be commanding the six corvettes.

‘Message passed, sir!’

‘Very good.’ Harbinger rocking smoothly across the swell. Back aft, on the quarterdeck, Timberlake would be fretting over the imminent loss of yet more depth charges.

‘Bearing oh-four-one, range one thousand and fifty yards!’

The turning circle under fifteen degrees of rudder was eight ship’s lengths… Depth charges a long way off to starboard were a muted thunder. He bent to the rim of the voice-pipe: ‘Port fifteen.’

‘Port fifteen, sir!’

‘Bearing oh-oh-three—’

He heard the wail of the commodore’s siren, and told Bearcroft, ‘Make on TBS to the close screen, “Comply with previous orders”.’

‘Fifteen of port wheel on, sir…’

But the turn was going to be too sharp: she’d end up inside the U-boat’s track – or where he guessed that track would be… He told Elphick, ‘Ease to ten.’

‘Ease to ten, sir!’

Reducing the angle of rudder, so the turn would be less tight. Harbinger still leaning hard to starboard as she swung – and more depth charges exploding, somewhere out there in the night.

‘Bearing three-four-three, range four hundred, target moving left to right!’

‘Midships and meet her.’

The U-boat had altered course, in the last half-minute…

‘Meet her, sir…’

Reversing the wheel, that meant, to take the swing off her… ‘Carlish – tell the engine room to stand by to make white smoke.’ He’d warned Hawkey, and the other destroyers too. Corvettes, which lacked the equipment for making white smoke, had been told to have smoke-floats ready on their sterns. Nick ducked to the pipe again: ‘Steady!’

‘Three-five-five, sir—’

‘Steer three-six-oh.’

‘Target bears three-five-four, range two-fifty yards… Lost target, sir!’

‘Change depth settings to two hundred and fifty feet—’

More underwater explosions rumbled distantly. And from the other direction a new howling from the commodore’s siren was the order to his lumbering consorts to begin the second stage of that evasive turn. At this moment, as they turned, each of the corvettes would be dropping a second smoke-float in its own wake. The first would have been dropped as they made the first turn: the end-result would be a large area of sea dotted with floating cannisters emitting a grey-white, surface-hugging fog… And the reason for deepening the depth charge settings at this last minute in the attack was that losing the target at 250 yards indicated it was almost certainly deeper than 150 feet. The asdic beam in vertical cross-section was elliptical in shape, and couldn’t be raised or lowered, so as you ran towards a contact you lost it when it passed out of the lower limit of the beam.

‘Two-fifty feet set, sir!’

‘Stand by… Fire one!’ As chancy, he thought, as a coconut shy. Couldn’t be helped. The closer the better, and ideally right on top of the bastard, but the main thing was to shake him, scare him, keep him down and too busy to wonder where the convoy might be… ‘Fire two! Fire three!’ To have a reasonable chance of success you needed two ships on the job, so that one could stand off and maintain the asdic contact while the other ran in to drop depth charges; then they’d swap places, one reloading while the other attacked, contact being maintained by one or other all the time: until the U-boat was finally brought to the surface, or until you heard the underwater crash that would be its hull imploding… Nick ordered, ‘Tell the engine room, start making smoke … Chief Yeoman – TBS to destroyers, “Make smoke”.’ Astern, the charges exploded, deep ringing blasts impacting on the ship’s hull, and the sea lifting in humps in her wake and on the quarters – where in a minute there’d be smoke drifting, adding fog to rain, reducing visibility to just about nil. The other three would be adding their quota to it while they continued to hunt and bomb their targets: and the U-boats’ ears would be filled by four lots of churning screws as well as by intermittent explosions of depth charge patterns. And the smoke might hide a convoy, or might not: over a widening area no periscope view or glimpse from a daringly-surfaced U-boat would tell its captain anything at all: none of them would have any way of knowing that the convoy of thirty-five surviving merchantmen was slipping away southward, hidden in the smoke-thickened deluge and with the sounds of their propellers getting fainter every minute.

‘Starboard fifteen.’

Please God, may there be no others down south there, to make this whole exercise a waste of time…

The last of that pattern had exploded, its echoes reverberating away through fifteen hundred fathoms of black water. Binoculars were sweeping the surface as the turbulence subsided. Distantly, another destroyer’s charges sounded like a roll of muffled drums.

‘Fifteen of starboard wheel on, sir…’

‘Contact, contact! Bearing two-five-five—’

‘Midships.’ Damn it… ‘Port twenty.’

The German must have reversed his turn, swung sharply to port just after they’d lost contact. So that pattern had gone wide, and he’d be thinking he was clever…

‘Bearing two-five-two, range eight-fifty yards—’

Watchful reported over TBS that she’d lost her target. Nick snapped, ‘Tell him to join Goshawk… Midships.’

Throbbing asdic pings were being reflected back very clearly, the sharp, hard echoes that come unmistakably from a U-boat’s hull. Down there in the black water, a steel eggshell casing at the very tips of the hunters’ fingers: you needed to grasp it, crush it…

‘Bearing two-five-nine, range nine hundred… Moving left to right now…’

Wriggling like some kind of snake… ‘Set charges to three hundred feet. Steer two-eight-oh. Tell the engine room to stop making smoke. Chief Yeoman, pass that order to the others. One-eight-oh revolutions.’


After the fourth run, asdics couldn’t regain contact. A wider cast, a curving track designed to cross the U-boat’s escape route at some point no matter which way it might be steering, still failed to produce results.

Frustrating: but not unusual…

‘Had the sense not to hold to a straight course, obviously.’

Graves muttered, ‘Can’t win ’em all, sir.’

The main achievement was that the U-boats had been held off, that there’d been no shouts for help from the convoy. Nick thought, Touch wood: plenty of time yet… The whole scheme could fall to ruin so easily and suddenly, and he had to be ready for that too – for the worst, which would be sudden slaughter, loss of ships and lives for which he, Nick Everard, was directly and personally responsible – losses he would actually have caused, through trying to pull a fast one.

Bruce lost her contact only a few minutes later. Nick called down to the plot, where Mike Scarr was at work with two assistants, and elicited that Goshawk and Watchful were seven miles southeast. Bruce was four miles away on 080 degrees.

‘What’s my course to join Goshawk?’

‘One-three-oh, sir.’

Scarr had had the answer ready, anticipating the requirement. More depth charges rumbled, shivering Harbinger’s steel: so those two were still on their target.

‘Chief – TBS to Bruce, “Join me. My course one-three-oh, speed fifteen.”’ He told Chubb to take over the conning of the ship and bring her round to that course. Hoping to God the convoy was in the clear, with no U-boats trailing it, no separate concentrations lying in wait ahead of it. The corvettes would only use TBS in emergency or when an enemy was already in contact with them, so continuing silence on the air was a reassurance. He reminded himself again – it would only take one second for the sudden shattering of that silence…

Bruce acknowledged, sir.’

‘Very good.’

Chubb reported, ‘Course one-three-oh, sir.’ Harbinger seesawing at half speed across low, rolling ridges glistening pock-marked under the lash of rain.


At 2230 – the time at which they might have expected the convoy on its original course to run into the U-boat pack – Goshawk and Watchful made their kill.

Harbinger and Bruce had kept clear of the hunt, had spent the past hour patrolling a wide circumference around it, like circling an arena in which two matadors alternately played their bull. If the U-boat had broken away from them there’d have been a good chance of picking it up again here in the deep field; in fact it might have been difficult for the German captain to know which way to run, when he had two hunters on top of him and two guards widely separated on the perimeter and constantly moving round. Nick hadn’t evolved this tactic in any deliberate way, it had simply arisen from the circumstances, but it wasn’t a bad scheme at all, in a situation where you had the ships to spare. Harbinger and Bruce were protecting the hunters too, against interference by any stray U-boat that might have been in the vicinity and tempted to come to its friend’s assistance. A destroyer moving slowly on a steady course, or even stopped, holding a U-boat in its asdic beam, would make an easy target for another.

Nick had relaxed his crew to the second degree of readiness, although officers and key ratings were still closed up. Nick on his tall seat, hunched against the rain, watching the contest in the centre. Watchful had made a pass, dropped a pattern with deep settings, at twenty minutes past the hour. You knew they’d been deep ones by the sound of the explosions and the amount of disturbance on the surface: and he was watching the time because of the arrangements he’d made with the convoy’s commodore… Goshawk’s captain had told him over TBS when Harbinger and Bruce had first arrived, ‘I think Fritz is in trouble. He’s slowed down, and we’ve heard some funny noises.’ Then there’d been some minutes of alarm when the U-boat had given its tormentors a false target, an SBT – submarine bubble target, known to the Germans as a Pillenwerfer. It was a kind of underwater bomb which a submarine could eject to explode chemically in the sea, fizzing strongly enough to provide an asdic echo very much like the real McCoy. If the operator on the surface let himself be fooled by it long enough, the U-boat had a chance to creep away. But Goshawk’s man had caught on quickly, swept around and picked up his real target again.

You could imagine – if you cared to think about it – how sickening that must have been for the Germans.

After Watchful’s last deep pattern had burst, there were sounds of the enemy’s pumps running and tanks blowing. Searchlights from both hunting ships swept the surface, with guns’ crews standing ready, weapons loaded. But nothing appeared, asdics still held the contact, and Nick, watching through wet binoculars, hearing his own asdic’s regular, penetrating pulses and Chubb’s low Australian tones as he kept her circling, saw Goshawk gathering way, the white plume of bow-wave lifting as she picked up speed, running in for a fresh attack.

He’d thought, crossing his fingers, This one, now…

Imagining those people down there, you could almost feel sorry for them. If you could think of them as just ordinary human beings.

Deep thunder: then the surface quivered, lifting in patches that heaved and boiled. Harbinger felt the kicks of them in her steel belly: and then another—

‘Submerged explosion, sir!’

That shout had come from the HSD – Higher Submarine Detector – Leading Seaman Garment. Tony Graves, who’d been with him in the tiny A/S cabinet, was backing out, pulling earphones off his head. ‘That was it, sir. Not a doubt.’

Searchlight beams swung, criss-crossing. Goshawk slowing, heeling under a lot of rudder. Calling now on TBS: Bearcroft answered, and the message came as, U-boat believed destroyed. Searching for evidence.

Circling on: waiting, and believing it, everyone in Harbinger’s bridge knowing it – there’d been cheers, and there was some chatter now… but you did need evidence, and the only real proof would be the grisly kind. A U-boat could try to persuade its tormentors to consider it dead, and leave it, by spilling oil and firing wreckage and clothes out of a torpedo tube: so you needed more than that.

Goshawk spoke up again, Surface is thick with oil fuel. Other stuff as well. I’m lowering a boat.

You could smell the oil. Goshawk was lying stopped, Watchful circling her, and out here Harbinger and Bruce circling both of them, all four ships with their asdics and RDF active. Bruce was the only one, Nick realised, that had not participated in the destruction of a U-boat on this trip. Watchful had taken part in two successful hunts. Polishing off three of them wasn’t at all bad, particularly if there were no more losses from the convoy… But Peter Instance, Bruce’s lieutenant-in-command, would be feeling a bit out of it.

He’d have to look forward to better luck next time, that was all. Bruce just hadn’t had the luck to be in the right place at the right moment. Instance and his A/S team were just as competent as any of the others: and the four together, backed by the six corvettes, were getting better at it with every trip they made… He heard Chubb’s voice, into the wheelhouse voice-pipe: ‘Port five…’

Then the TBS again: Jock Audsley’s voice,

My whaler has recovered one complete body and a number of – er – assorted spare parts. Also gear and papers. Seems it was U 102.

For a moment Nick had the numbers confused, and linked that one with the so-called ‘ace’, Max Looff… Then he remembered that Neumann had said Looff’s boat was U 122, not 102… But something else in his mind: it was that flippant assorted spare parts… Audsley, Goshawk’s captain, was a very civilised, thoughtful man: the questionable humour was self-protective, a product of this endless nightmare of a battle, the need to make a joke of horror.

He swung round to Carlish. ‘Sub, ask the pilot for a course to rejoin the convoy, at twenty-five knots. Then go aft, shake Lieutenant Neumann and inform him with my compliments that we have just destroyed U 102.’

He thought, We’re all bastards


By dawn the rain was finished and the cloud-cover was breaking up, giving a very pretty sunrise – shades of pink deepening into scarlet over blueish, low-lying haze. If you’d been imaginative enough you might have seen that brilliant hoop of colour as a triumphal arch into which convoy and escort were streaming as they left the Greenland air gap behind them.

The course was due east. The convoy had steamed south for three hours, as Nick and the commodore had agreed it would, then altered to east. He’d brought his destroyers down at twenty-five knots on 170 degrees and made the rendezvous before midnight. During the run south they’d listened to HF/DF transmissions astern, and Nick had guessed at bewildered U-boat captains surfacing and wondering what had hit them, where they were, where the hell the convoy might be, where was the vanished U 102…

Goshawk and Watchful were flying the signal U-boat sunk.

The convoy hadn’t been molested at all. The commodore had signalled thanks and congratulations, and Nick wondered how many of the merchant captains might realise how lucky they’d been, how easily the scheme could have ended in disaster. He guessed the commodore, who was a retired vice-admiral of about the same vintage as Nick’s old uncle Hugh, would have a shrewd idea of it, would be drawing his own sighs of relief as he looked around at his surviving company of thirty-four valuable ships, crews and war cargoes plugging east into the lurid dawn, on course for Malin Head and, with air patrols likely to be around from about this point on, comparatively secure.

Until next time… And meanwhile there was no discomfort in the knowledge that if he had not backed his hunch, some of those freighters would now have been under nine thousand feet of water, in the ocean-bed silt with dead men inside them: men who instead, in just a few days’ time, would be in the arms of wives, parents, lovers, children. It was an enormous, really frightening privilege to have been in a position to influence an outcome of such huge importance: for the rest of one’s own life, he guessed, one would remember it and feel humbled by it in a way that would be very difficult to explain.

Except perhaps to Kate.

The colours of the dawn were fading, becoming nondescript, more typically Atlantic shades above the still fiery curve of the horizon. Thinking of Kate now, not ships: of the hope there’d be a letter waiting – even a letter she might have posted in England.