The torpedo struck Compass Rose as she was moving at almost her full speed: she was therefore mortally torn by the sea as well as by the violence of the enemy. She was hit squarely about twelve feet from her bows: there was one slamming explosion and the noise of ripping and tearing metal and the fatal sound of sea-water flooding in under great pressure: a blast of heat from the stricken fo’c’sle rose to the bridge like a hideous waft of incense. Compass Rose veered wildly from her course and came to a shaking stop, like a dog with a bloody muzzle: her bows were very nearly blown off and her stern was already starting to cant in the air, almost before the way was off the ship.

At the moment of disaster, Ericson was on the bridge and Lockhart and Wells: the same incredulous shock hit them all like a sickening body-blow. They were masked and confused by the pitch-dark night and they could not believe that Compass Rose had been struck. But the ugly angle of the deck must only have one meaning and the noise of things sliding about below their feet confirmed it. There was another noise, too, a noise which momentarily paralysed Ericson’s brain and prevented him thinking at all; it came from a voice-pipe connecting the fo’c’sle with the bridge - an agonized animal howling, like a hundred dogs going mad in a pit. It was the men caught by the explosion, which must have jammed their only escape: up the voice-pipe came their shouts, their crazy hammering, their screams for help. But there was no help for them: with all executioner’s hand, Ericson snapped the voice-pipe cover shut, cutting off the noise.

The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat.