66

It is not part of the British tradition to humiliate junior officers at the start of an assignment. This arbitrary type of practice might jolt them into reality, but the price that is paid is too high. In training schools or academies, where they are with their peers, such treatment is forgivable. In front of the men they are supposed to command it is not.

The ship’s captain was only a senior lieutenant by rank. He studied MacQueen’s documents and decided that this lad should be taken down a notch or two. The pace for working up was hectic in order to get the ship’s company working as a team, or as groups of interlocking teams. There were gunnery ratings, signals ratings, engine room personnel, radar specialists, the sick berth attendant, cooks, and stewards—every ship was self-contained. Then they had to coordinate with the other ships and conduct joint exercises in the Northumberland Straits. Each ship contained approximately ninety men, including six officers, a number of petty officers, and other ranks. The POs were quartered near the stern, the seamen and stokers in the fo’c’sle at the bow, and the officers’ tiny cabins clustered around the wardroom in the middle. HMCS Fleur-de-Lis had been fitted with new electronic gear in Galveston, Texas, and the captain was very proud of it.

There was one rating doing additional punishment duty for insubordination. This man was placed in charge of the new gunnery officer, and Patrick and he were given three pots of paint. These were to mark and identify every terminal, switch, fuse, and junction of the new wiring system throughout the vessel, which the Americans had neglected to do.

“I like my officers to know every rivet, bolt, and nut of their ship,” explained the captain. “This is a great opportunity for you to learn.”

There is no point belabouring the difficulties of this job during a hot summer, when activity was busiest and the time for rest minimal. The secret, wet, and dark chambers of any ship are almost inaccessible in places, and to wield a paintbrush by dim flashlight is virtually impossible. Naturally, it got into their hair and splashed onto everything. This went on for the entire week; the captain thought it was a good joke. Even at meals in the wardroom, he would emit those startling bursts of jumpy laughs as MacQueen ground his teeth and the other officers ignored it or felt mildly ashamed.

Of course, the crew saw it all. Most of them thought that MacQueen’s companion had been unjustly punished in the first place, and this merely served to alienate the other officers and create some sympathy for Patrick MacQueen. He never mentioned once that he had served in the ranks in the army, but he knew what they were thinking, and that dismayed him even more. Why are people willing to sacrifice so much just to nail me to the wall? he wondered.

The Englishmen and the Canadians got along tolerably better with each other than with their US counterparts. Patrick became friendly with one of the watch officers, whom he would see again in St. John’s, and in Derry. His own companions tended to treat him with circumspection, until the captain’s motives were clear. That is the usual path of human conduct, and it didn’t surprise MacQueen.

The first lieutenant was from Montreal, or possibly Westmount. The navigation officer was very tall, with sloping shoulders and a wide empty smile—MacQueen would stand watch on the bridge with him for the graveyard watch, from midnight to four A.M., then from noon to four P.M., or “eight bells”. The signals officer was a young veteran from western Canada with premature circles under his eyes and a face for the girls; he was also a sub-lieutenant. Then there was diminutive Sub-lieutenant Rockwood, who supervised the radar and asdic. The coxswain was a Royal Naval petty officer, the chief engineer was a Scot-Canadian petty officer, and the gunner’s mate was a leading seaman from Ontario. Patrick MacQueen was assigned the depth charges, the four-inch gun, two Oerlikon cannons, and a pom-pom anti-aircraft gun, plus other assorted small arms. By now he also knew something about the wiring in the ship.

The overall length of a Flower-class corvette was approximately two hundred feet long, with a thirty-foot beam and a moulded depth of seventeen feet. They were originally designed as whalers, then converted into coastal escorts, and finally—in desperation—flung out into the north Atlantic. They stayed afloat and could be built in the Great Lakes; so, along with other modified models, they became the workhorses of the navy.

Patrick was told one of the corvettes had sailed out of the harbour and never came back. It was Flower-class, too, but from the Royal Navy, and named after a potted plant.

The commander from headquarters finally arrived. He stomped about, banging his cane on the metal decks and asking some pretty absurd questions of the seamen. He drank a pink gin in the wardroom, surrounded by the officers in their best uniforms. The White Ensigns fluttered bravely as the two little ships sailed out of the harbour for exercises, and the commander stood on the bridge of the Fleur-de-Lis looking like Lord Nelson after a seven-course dinner.

They dropped a depth charge in shallow water, which broke the crockery, and Sub-lieutenant MacQueen was cast adrift in the ship’s boat with the cook, the steward, and the sick-berth attendant to rescue “survivors”. No one but MacQueen knew how to row a boat. Fortunately, his gunner’s mate jumped in as they were being lowered, for which the captain never forgave him, but he saved the day: MacQueen’s hands were raw from washing them in kerosene to remove the paint.

Back in the harbour, the commander ordered the four-inch gun to be elevated. He stood under this on the gun platform to deliver an inspiring address to the crew. He affected an English accent. “When the troops were taken off the beaches of Dunkirk,” he said, “they left their equipment behind. Except for the guards. The guards even came off the beaches with their boots polished!”

“You’d think they’d have something better to do at Dunkirk?” muttered the gunner’s mate.

“Eh, what?” said the commander. The sailor’s wide collars stirred in the breeze as the crew stood in a long triangle on the fo’c’sle with their heads bowed and the white seagulls flapping above them. The distant whistle of a train tumbled out of the wooded hills and echoed across the harbour. It was enough to inspire anyone to heights of oratory.

“Now you are prepared,” continued the commander, looking into the sunshine like MacArthur returning to the Philippines. “And when you meet the enemy, and by God, you shall…” Those last four words became the ship’s unofficial motto, which might have pleased the commander, but the application referred to everything from washing soup pots to prescribing laxatives.

The commander was finally piped ashore by the bosun’s mate; the paint pots were stowed in the paint locker as they got ready for sea. The tampion was placed in the muzzle of the four-inch gun, everything movable was secured, and the anchor was winched up from the bottom of the bay.

Signal flags were hoisted to the halyards, the Aldis signal lamps of the two ships blinked brightly, a line of ratings assembled on the fo’c’sle to clear harbour, and the first lieutenant rang down to the engine room, “Half speed ahead.” The lookouts closed-up to their stations, and one scurried up to the crow’s nest. The captain paced behind the bridge in a black battle dress jacket with binoculars slung around his neck. He chewed his red moustache and stuttered and muttered to himself in joy. The ship trembled, headed past a dangerous rock, and out to the bay.

“Ten degrees to starboard, then steady as she goes,” said the first lieutenant down a brass voice pipe to the helmsman.

“Aye, sir. Ten degrees to starboard, sir,” echoed up the pipe. “Steady as she goes on course north-east by north thirty-five degrees, sir.”

“Right,” said the first lieutenant.

Past Caribou Island, their companion ship of the Royal Navy, in its pale camouflage of the Western Approaches, swung into line astern, heading for George Bay and the Strait of Canso.

“Pull that thing to full speed ahead, please,” said the first lieutenant.

Patrick MacQueen grasped the brass handles and pulled to full speed ahead. Through the wooden grating of the bridge, he could feel the power surge forth as the bells clanged below. They stood on the open bridge, looking forward over the gun platform and the fo’c’sle, and to starboard rose the wooded cliffs of Antigonish. Everything was back where it should be, and the natural order of things was restored. The ocean beckoned them and they responded by forgetting their small miseries and heeding the call of the sirens. There were vast troubles ahead—but, at that moment, no one cared. They faced the salt wind, and for a moment they all lived through a note of rising harmony like the swell of a great choir. This was where the Lords of the Universe belonged, and even the humblest of them knew it.

The captain laid his hands on the rails beside the Oerlikon gun. He looked like a Viking. They sailed through the Strait of Canso, which seemed like a lonely Nordic fjord, and then into the following billows of the Cabot Strait that stretched their white caps to the horizon. The sun glinted off the wing of a patrolling aircraft high in the air and Canadian waters were left astern of the red cross of St. George on their proud ensigns.