Had he known it at the time, John Clark’s war started a few days earlier than history’s convention records. He was not alone, for the world had been sliding towards a second cataclysm since the vindictive terms of the armistice ending the First World War extracted punitive terms from the German nation. The Chinese had been fighting the Japanese for several years and the first Nazi pogroms against the German Jews had already split many families, sending hundreds into exile. But for people like John Clark, who was better known to his contemporaries as Jack, the busy occupations of daily life excluded any real appreciation of the palpable movements of history, still less of the ineluctable quality of their consequences.
On that fine late summer morning the sun rose over the great maritime city of Hamburg in a blazing orb, burning off a slight mist that lay over the turbid waters of the River Elbe. It caught the greened copper spire of St Michael’s great church and, just as its first tentative light had released the song of birds a few hours earlier, now it initiated the excruciating din of the hammers of a hundred riveters as they commenced another day’s work in the city’s busy shipyards. To the uninitiated, few places on earth can convey such an impression of hellish disorganisation as a shipyard in full production. The cacophony of the riveters is but a part of the dislocating horror of such places. That which Clark entered that morning was no exception. Beyond the offices from which the construction of a dozen vessels was being simultaneously planned and overseen, lay the huge ‘shops’ and rolling mills which processed the steel plates and joists brought from the stockyards. With a skill equal to true artistry these inanimate grey rectangles assumed graceful curves which were then despatched towards the building ways that sloped down to the great river. Here they were united to a thousand similarly treated plates and grew into the elegant lines of unlaunched hulls which towered above the concrete slips, each one surrounded by scaffolding and staging. The scene teemed with the movements of hundreds of men; overhead the cranes and gantries moved newly formed plates into position; here and there the blue flame of oxyacetylene cutting torches blazed, elsewhere the small portable furnaces of the riveters and their mates glowed redly. Drills screeched as they bored through adjacent plates and then incandescent rivets were thrown with apparent disregard, caught by the expert wielders of tongs and inserted into the holes, to be hammered by pneumatic power until they drew steel so tight that even the pressure of the ocean four fathoms below the surface could not intrude.
Beyond the building ways those hulls nearing completion rode high in the water at the fitting-out berths. Here a more complex process was in train, for they were receiving the final fittings, from accommodation blocks to the light fittings in individual compartments, from masts and derricks, to bureaux for the cabins of their officers. In such an environment, as he walked to a smartly painted hull riding high in the water alongside number one fitting-out berth, Clark’s thoughts were very far from considerations of international tension, let alone war, for his mood in standing-by a brand new cargo liner was far from gloomy. On the contrary he was optimistic, for the splendid new ship was unequivocal evidence of global reinvestment and marked an easing of the economic depression that had held the world in thrall since the Wall Street crash ten years earlier. Clark’s entire life for the past four months had been devoted entirely to the completion of the new ship, one of a class of powerful twin-screw, eighteen-knot vessels intended for the Far Eastern Service of the Eastern Steam Navigation Company of Liverpool. The ESNC was more familiarly known as ‘Dent’s’ or ‘Dentco’, after the family who had founded the shipping house in Liverpool 120 years earlier. They had then owned sailing vessels, largely employed in the India and China trades which had been opened up when the old East India Company lost its monopoly, but when Dent’s moved into steam, the new name was coined to reflect this shift of technological gear. Clark’s new ship, in common with her seven sisters – four of which were being built in British yards, with one just launched in Rotterdam and another almost completed in Copenhagen – was a motor vessel, not a steamship. However, it was not anticipated that the board of the Eastern Steam Navigation Company would change the company’s name again. Perhaps a more relevant tradition, instituted in 1870 when Dent’s had ordered the first of their line of famous steamers, was that of the new ship’s name. The introduction of steam had brought a predictability about schedules unknown to the world of sail, which, allied with the telegraph, transformed the operation of merchant ships into a thoroughly modern business. This shift in culture had resulted in what a later age would call ‘branding’ and manifested itself in a company house style designed to impress potential shippers both in Europe and in the Far East. Thus, along with distinctive funnel designs and hull colours, Dent’s fast cargo ships all bore the names of explorers.
As had been his custom for many weeks, Clark walked up the gangway of the Ernest Shackleton that bright morning with a list of queries to review before his morning meeting with the builder’s representatives over coffee at ten o’clock. Each daily conference threw up queries and differences as the Ernest Shackleton neared completion and the ceremony of handing the ship over to her new owners approached. Clark was the ship’s designated chief officer and with the second engineer formed Dent’s representatives presiding over the final phase of the building. Whatever deficiencies the new ship revealed in service would not be attributed to her German builders, but to Clark and his colleague, Gerry Hunter, an outspoken Ulsterman. This point was emphasised by Dent’s harassed marine superintendent when he paid his fortnightly visits to inspect progress.
‘I have eight ships to supervise,’ he would complain, ‘and it doesn’t help to have three of them building on the ruddy Continent. I might as well be at sea again for all the time I get at home!’
Clark and Hunter tactfully and dutifully commiserated with their superior and, after he had left for Copenhagen, or Rotterdam and the ferry at the Hook of Holland, got on with their own task. This was demanding enough, and ranged from the relatively trivial to the complex and apparently more important. Thus, in addition to such matters as ensuring that the correct fittings were put in the wardrobes of the dozen passengers the Ernest Shackleton would soon carry, it was equally vital that the pipework and pumping arrangements of her ballast, oil, water and deep cargo tanks all functioned correctly. The arguments over the specification and the realities of construction were usually reconcilable and amicably settled. They rarely provoked anything more than merely technical disputes with the staff of the German yard, who were, it seemed, eager to get the job finished. If, in this busy time, Clark or Hunter were unaware of greater events impinging upon their lives, it was simply that the shipyard, in common with others in Hamburg, had very full order books. They could not blame the German officials for wanting the British order completed and the Ernest Shackleton on her way to the Oderhafen to start loading her first cargo for the Far East. They were eager to be finished themselves, though they wanted the ship in serviceable order, for Dent’s were exacting masters.
Both men observed that the radical National Socialist government of Adolf Hitler had galvanised German shipbuilding. That much was clear to the two busy officers as they did their morning rounds of the ship, ticking off items in their notebooks or making additional comments, taking measurements or discussing details with the foremen and chargehands each assigned specific work aboard. But, at a more personal level, the lack of rancour aroused in the daily meetings was also due to the popularity of Hunter and Clark. The former because he was a man of outrageous opinion whose extreme Northern Irish accent made his English incomprehensible to German ship managers eager to practise their linguistic skills, but who made them laugh; and the latter because he could not only understand and interpret Hunter, but spoke German fluently. It was this ability which had recommended Dent’s board to order Clark to stand-by the new tonnage being built in Hamburg.
Dent’s were well aware of this talent, for Clark’s father was a director of the company. Clark senior had married a beautiful German girl named Lisa Petersen, whom he had met in Hamburg when he had been second officer of the company’s steamer Henry Hudson. In 1901 this ship had conveyed members of the board of the Eastern Steam Navigation Company to Hamburg, where she was scheduled to dry-dock and where her passenger accommodation was used as a boardroom for negotiations with a rival German shipping company. On the evening of their arrival Dent’s held a reception which the ship’s officers were obliged to attend. Lisa Petersen accompanied her widowed father, the chairman of F.G. Petersen Reederei, and in his distraction as he met Sir George Dent lay his daughter’s fate: she and the Henry Hudson’s second officer fell head over heels in love.
Predictably Herr Petersen heartily disapproved of the marriage, but for two years the young lovers were intransigent. In the end Lisa’s angry but indulgent father capitulated, extracting only a promise that the offspring of the young couple would be taught German and would visit Hamburg as often as possible. The match did the young Christopher Clark little harm, for the board of Dent’s had come to an arrangement with their German competitors and were by then running a joint service to Chinese ports. Certain difficulties arising over the operation of ships in Chinese waters persuaded the joint boards to consider a common representative in the Treaty Port of Chinkiang. Christopher Clark soon found himself promoted to master and, after one voyage in command and with the title of ‘Captain’, the young couple were sent out to Chinkiang, where Captain Clark acted as marine superintendent, presiding over the interests of both companies until the arrangement foundered in the First World War. Life in the International Concessions of the remoter Treaty Ports took on a slightly surreal air, with the small isolated British and German communities abandoning their personal friendships and pretending neither group existed. Christopher and Lisa were almost totally ostracised, their prestige and, to the local population, the important fact of their ‘face’, diminishing with the severing of the joint service provided by Petersen’s and Dent’s. This strained life ended when Clark was posted to Hong Kong, where few knew of Lisa’s nationality and where the couple continued to live, as far as was possible, a life of social inconspicuousness until the war ended. By this time they had two children, Carl and little John, who was eight years old and destined, in due course, to follow Carl aboard the static British public-school-cum-training-ship Conway as a cadet. Carl, passing out of Conway in 1915, joined Dent’s and while still only an apprentice was torpedoed twice by U-boats of the Imperial German Navy. He did not survive the second attack.
After the war Captain Clark returned to sea and made several voyages before being invited to join the board of the Eastern Steam Navigation Company. By then the brief post-war boom had turned sour. The depression in shipping was followed by a greater universal economic disaster. British shipowners felt beleaguered; mergers and takeovers occurred; the board of Eastern Steam were steered through these difficulties in part by the skill of Captain Clark, whose partnership with the new chairman, Sir Desmond Cranbrooke, was crucial to the company’s survival. Curiously, both of these men were destined to play small, circumstantial, but significant parts in the fate of convoy PQ17.
During his stay standing-by the Ernest Shackleton in Hamburg, Clark had ensconced himself in a small hotel not far from the shipyard. It was a neat, family-run establishment which enjoyed the patronage of ships’ officers like Clark, understanding their needs and providing them with modest facilities for them to undertake the considerable amount of paperwork which they brought home from the shipyard. Although the builders provided Clark and Hunter with a tiny office, neither man much enjoyed working there after hours and it served as little more than a place in which to change in and out of their boiler suits. Both preferred to relax in their hotel and sort out and coordinate the problems of the day over a stein of beer and a cigarette.
Ironically, as Hunter’s engine room came nearer his expectations, his work eased, whereas Clark, as chief mate and therefore executive officer of the ship, had increasingly to consider the domestic arrangements necessary to have the ship stored, manned and in commission ready to enter service on the due date. Fortunately the hotel provided him with a telephone and he was able to contact Eastern Steam’s Liverpool headquarters with reasonable ease. The previous evening he had put in his requests for key personnel to join the following week and reminded the chief store clerk of outstanding indents. He knew the clerk, a Mr Wilson, quite well. Wilson was a quiet, efficient man with a sickly wife and a son with a club foot; Clark always thought Wilson possessed the intelligence and drive to have done better in life, but the clerk bore his twin burdens uncomplainingly. Nevertheless Clark often spent a few moments chatting to Wilson, partly out of a feeling of pity for the man, partly because he knew Wilson to be discreet. Thus the previous evening he had asked Wilson if he could find out who the company were intending to send over as the Ernest Shackleton’s bosun. Clark was anxious to get hold of a man named Dixon, but feared that an older petty officer would be given the new ship as a mark of confidence, though everyone knew a new ship was a work-out and the old boy, Perry by name, would be better left aboard the James Clark Ross where he had been vegetating happily for years.
‘They haven’t decided yet, Mr Clark…’
‘That means it’s Perry,’ Clark had said, disappointed.
‘Er, I don’t think so, sir…’
‘Well, if it isn’t Perry and it isn’t Dixon, who are they thinking of, Wilson?’
‘You haven’t seen any English papers, Mr Clark?’
‘Fat chance,’ responded Clark, considering his own fraught existence and at first missing Wilson’s point.
‘The news isn’t too good, I’m afraid, sir.’
There was something about Wilson’s tone which was both ominous and somehow intimate, as though the man wanted to bridge the distance between them, and Clark was quite unaware that this was because he himself was situated in Germany.
Instead Clark assumed the bad news was of a domestic nature, something to do with the ship or the company.
‘What’s up, Dent’s share prices diving again?’ he asked with an air of flippancy that increased Wilson’s apprehension.
‘No, no, nothing like that, it’s a consequence of the troubles in Danzig…’ And that was as far as Wilson got, for the next moment the line went dead and Clark became aware that he had been chatting for longer than he ought to have done. Moreover, neither Danzig nor its troubles meant much to Clark and he so far forgot about the matter that he failed to mention it to Gerry Hunter over dinner that night, preferring to grumble about the indecisiveness of the company in the matter of choosing a bosun.
That Clark, a German speaker, was unaware of the manoeuvrings of the Nazi government from any local newspaper, or the conversations of those about him in the shipyard, needs some explanation, but it is easily given. By nature seafarers are not usually politically inquisitive; politics are the province of those who dwell on land and, if he read newspaper headlines, Clark read the Nazi version of events with a naive and uncritical eye. Moreover, Jack Clark was a man whose interests were entirely absorbed by the sea and, in his youthful conceit, he had conceived a vague contempt for the machinations of faction and party. He would by nature have rather read a book than a newspaper and an early adventure had diverted his attention away from the cut and thrust of commercial acumen that had decided his father’s career. Whilst still at school aboard the Conway, Clark and another senior cadet had been selected to accompany what turned out to be the last British Arctic expedition under sail. Led by Commander Frank Worsley, whose name had been made by his part in Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ill-starred Endurance expedition, Clark’s experiences as an ordinary seaman aboard the small brigantine Island in which Worsley visited Spitsbergen and Franz Joseph Land had entranced him. By way of a diversion from the drudgery of life in the shipyard, what leisure hours he possessed were spent reading books on exploration, which he collected. Currently, and for the third time, he was reading Cook’s journals. It was for Clark not only fitting that the shipping company to which he was apprenticed on his return from the Arctic named its vessels after explorers; indeed, it was a private delight that his present appointment was to a ship named after Worsley’s heroic ‘Boss’, Shackleton himself. Had he known how these almost infantile connections were to intertwine in his life, he might not have viewed them with such enthusiasm.
Thereafter, sufficiently cushioned by circumstance and influence against the worst deprivations of the depression, Clark had, unlike many seafarers, escaped the despair of protracted unemployment himself. His career as a junior officer as he rose in rank with the acquisition of his certificates of competency had not been greatly interfered with by the decline in world trade. Moreover, Dent’s, with their fast liner services, had secured two government contracts and thereby saved most of their ships from enforced idleness.
Clark might still have gleaned all was not well in the world during that fateful summer had a number of other circumstances not hidden the facts from him. Had Hunter been the remotest bit interested in current affairs, he might have drawn his colleague’s attention to the impending crisis between Germany and the Anglo-French. Hunter, however, was no more interested in politics outside Ulster than in flying to the moon. But Hunter’s parochialism was of little account when set against the smokescreen of family, for Clark’s German relations had played host to him on several occasions since his arrival in Hamburg. To be fair to Clark, he had declined their invitation to him to stay with them in their large house in Altona, a pleasant residential suburb of greater Hamburg that lay some miles below the city centre on the north bank of the Elbe. During the early weeks of his sojourn at the shipyard, Clark had regularly spent his weekends in the company of his mother’s older brother, Uncle Reinhard, and his family. Reinhard Petersen had two sons: Johannes, at thirty, was a year older than Jack, while cousin Kurt was thirty-three. Kurt was an officer in the Kriegsmarine, so only Johannes lived at home with his parents and strutted about in what Jack thought was a rather ridiculous brown uniform bearing the red, white and black armband of the Nazi swastika. Clark found Johannes’ constant eulogiums upon the virtues of Adolf Hitler and of the progressive nature of the National Socialist movement tedious but, because he quite liked Uncle Reinhard and Aunt Eva was a kindly soul, he took little notice of them. Clark had been accustomed to Johannes’ bombast since childhood. The political discussion that did take place in the Petersens’ household was not unnaturally weighted in favour of the national government’s policies and their successful regeneration of the German economy, particularly insofar as it affected Hamburg. Although F.G. Petersen’s had long since passed into liquidation, Uncle Reinhard was eager to re-establish the former Anglo-German links and would have liked to have resurrected his family’s fortunes in shipping. What was never mentioned was the intimidation of minorities, though occasional veiled allusions to ‘riff-raff’ were made by Uncle Reinhard, and Johannes referred darkly to the ‘scum’ which were being removed from their parasitical positions in German business.
Unable to judge the extent or nature of outrages being perpetrated by Nazi Party members, blinded by the familial ties of blood, and working daily with Germans whom he had come to respect as they all went about their business of building the Ernest Shackleton, Clark was almost hermetically sealed from any objective appreciation of the deteriorating European situation. Nor had he taken much notice of another circumstance which had occurred about a month earlier, before the progress of the ship’s building became increasingly absorbing and his duties less easy to lay aside in favour of visits to Altona.
He had arrived at the Petersens’ house one Friday evening at the end of July to be greeted by Johannes with the news that he had better get a good night’s sleep because Kurt had arrived from Berlin and the three of them were all going out wildfowling on the following morning.
‘Where is Kurt?’ Clark asked.
Johannes pulled a face. ‘Oh, he has gone to see some piece of tail he likes. She is a silly cow but then Kurt is a sailor like you and,’ Johannes lowered his voice so that his mother could not hear, ‘he likes to fuck anything.’
‘I see,’ Clark responded with a chuckle, hoping to embarrass his cousin. ‘I thought it was you Nazis who liked to fuck anything, you said you had fucked Austria…’
‘Ah, Jack, you think you are a clever bastard.’ Johannes grinned back, then added in a lower tone, ‘This girl is no good for Kurt and I think he has some stupid idea he is going to marry her. I am very worried about him. He cannot marry her.’
‘Why? What’s the matter with her?’
‘Oh, she is not right for Kurt. He is stationed in Berlin and I keep asking him to bring back one of those smart Berliners with an educated arse for his little brother, even if he doesn’t want one for himself. He says they are not worth the trouble, which is a clear indication that he has got it bad for Magda…’
‘Magda?’ Clark frowned. ‘Magda… er, was it Liepmann?’
‘Yes… You see, now you know, you don’t approve…’
‘I haven’t seen Madga since we were kids,’ Clark said, remembering a skinny dark girl with unsightly pigtails and huge eyes who had once played with them during some family gathering. ‘But isn’t she some relation?’
‘Yes, that’s what makes it worse, she’s a second cousin besides being a Jew.’
‘Does that make any difference?’
‘What? Being a Jew?’
‘No, being a second cousin?’
‘Not as much as being a Jew does, for God’s sake!’
‘Well, if Kurt doesn’t care, why should you worry?’
‘You don’t understand, do you, Jack?’
‘Apparently not.’
But they got no further, for at this point Uncle Reinhard came into the room and Kurt’s marriage plans were hurriedly dropped.
‘Time for a little schnapps, I think,’ Uncle Reinhard proposed, rubbing his hands, ‘and you can tell me how your ship is coming along, Jack.’
Clark did not see the elder of his two cousins until the following morning, and even when Kurt appeared in the first light of dawn, he seemed disinclined to talk. Clark attributed no significance to this. Neither the hour nor the purpose of their excursion was conducive to idle chatter. He declined a gun and offered to row the skiff which the family kept in a boathouse on the Elbe. Pulling across to the river’s southern bank where an area of marsh lay, bordering the river with the shallows beloved by duck, Jack pottered happily while his cousins blazed away for two hours, their English spaniels throwing mud and water over their masters as they brought back the booty. Jack lay on his oars between the two marksmen as they stalked through the shallows in their waders, collecting the haul until Kurt and Johannes had had enough and announced a strong desire for breakfast.
On the walk back to the house carrying their bag and with the spaniels romping about them, it was Johannes who extolled the virtues of the vigour induced by their early-morning pursuit so that Jack gathered such manly activities formed some part of the Nazi creed. For the first time a sense of unease crept into Jack’s mind. He possessed an innate suspicion of linking the personal with so obviously a national movement as the Nazi ethos. Something of his scepticism must have shown on his face, for Kurt caught his eye and Jack sensed he too felt something of his own awkwardness. But he dismissed the notion as silly; how could he possibly know what Kurt was thinking? Kurt was a serious, reserved man and was probably simply embarrassed by his younger brother’s rather preposterous enthusiasm. Indeed, this seemed confirmed when Kurt snapped, ‘Please shut up, Hannes. Adolf Hitler is not God!’
Johannes shut up as Kurt had commanded, but the mood of the morning had been shattered. The younger brother’s face bore a stony, resentful expression with which his English cousin was unfamiliar and they trudged the rest of the way in silence. Even now Jack Clark attributed Johannes’ mood to mere sibling interaction: it was only much later that he realised it was evidence of the ideological chasm that was opening up between the two brothers.
But there was one moment that weekend that left Jack truly perplexed and it occurred just as he was leaving to return to his hotel late on the Sunday afternoon. In his honour, Aunt Eva had served tea in the English mode, and both Uncle Reinhard and his two sons were in decorous and rather awkward attendance.
‘I shall carry your bag down to the tram-stop,’ Kurt announced as Jack laid his cup and saucer down and turned to take leave of Johannes.
‘He is going to his Jewish tart,’ Johannes said in a disagreeable stage whisper which, Jack thought, both Kurt and his father could hear.
‘Well don’t be long, my dear,’ Aunt Eva said, looking at her elder son.
Kurt spread his hands and shrugged. ‘You would not think a Korvettenkapitän in the Kriegsmarine would need so much mothering, would you Jack, eh?’
Jack, not knowing quite what to say with Johannes’ remark still in his ears, smiled wanly.
‘Come,’ said Kurt, ‘let me have your bag.’
‘There’s no need…’
‘I insist.’
They had left the house and garden behind them before Kurt spoke. ‘I heard what Hannes said to you and it is true, I am intending to see my Jewish tart.’ Kurt said. ‘Do you remember Magda Liepmann, Jack? She played with us once or twice when you came to stay as a little boy.’
‘I recall a dark girl with long plaits.’
Kurt chuckled. ‘Oh, you should see her long plaits now…’
‘I should like to meet her again,’ Jack said conversationally.
‘Perhaps you will,’ Kurt said, before going on, a note of urgency in his tone. ‘But there is something I wanted to speak to you about; something between ourselves. I know you are fond of Hannes, Jack, but be careful what you say to him; he is a Nazi and not to be trusted.’
‘I must say I don’t particularly warm to his zeal,’ Jack responded. ‘He’s rather too dogmatic for my taste.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Kurt interrupted, ‘and I have no time to explain, but it is best that you are circumspect in your dealings with him, as with all Nazis. He is typical, a convinced Nazi, and now father has joined the Party.’ Kurt paused a moment and set Clark’s bag down to change hands.
‘Here, let me.’ They shared the weight between them, then went on.
‘Anyway,’ resumed Kurt, ‘it is not circumstantial that I am in Hamburg. I have a job to do and you may see me in the shipyard in the next few weeks…’
‘That would be pleasant…’
‘No, it would not, Jack.’ Kurt’s tone was unhappily vehement. ‘I only wish it were so. I tried to get another assignment, but I could not pull enough strings. Of course, I knew you were standing-by the Ernest Shackleton, but I did not wish to meet you, not on board, at least.’
‘Why not?’ Jack looked sharply at his cousin.
Kurt remained silent for a moment as they walked in step, each holding a handle of Jack’s bag. ‘Because, like sleeping with a Jewish girl, having an English cousin is beginning to look dangerous in this country.’
Jack digested this news. ‘And that is why your mother told you not to be out long?’
‘You begin to understand, Jack,’ Kurt said. ‘Look, there is the tram stop, so I must tell you quickly that it is better that if we meet in the shipyard, you must pretend not to recognise me. And, forgive me Jack, but don’t come to the house too often any more. I shan’t be staying there, I’ve naval accommodation in the city, but it is best for all of us that no direct connections are made by other people.’
‘But Hannes…’
‘Hannes will keep his mouth shut about you, if he knows what is good for him, unlike that Austrian dogshit he thinks is Jesus Christ. Besides, he has applied to join the Kriegsmarine like his big brother…’
‘You don’t approve?’
They were approaching the tram stop and a small queue waited for transport into Hamburg. Kurt stopped, jerking the bag swinging between them and compelling Jack to face him. Jack took both handles and held out his hand to Kurt.
‘What do you think the opinion of a non-Party Korvettenkapitän counts for in these matters?’ he asked ironically. ‘No, I shall recommend him. I may need the protection of a Nazi brother, God help me. Goodbye, Jack. I hope we meet again.’
‘I was hoping to meet Magda,’ Jack said, trying to introduce a flippant tone to counter the depressing gloom that seemed now to have enveloped Kurt ever since they had set out on the duck shoot.
‘I think you will,’ said Kurt.
‘We could have dinner together.’
‘Yes, we could,’ Kurt said doubtfully. ‘Perhaps we will. Here comes your tram. Goodbye.’
And then he turned and was gone into the summer night, striding away towards his dark lover with the transformed pigtails.
So absorbing had the work of completing the Ernest Shackleton become that Jack, to his retrospective shame, almost forgot about this odd encounter. Kurt’s sombre character lent an air of personal dramatisation to the affair and this had tended to demonise his younger brother. Johannes was not such a bad fellow and probably nursed no more than the prejudices of many young German men. In this reflection Jack Clark forgot the perceptive notice he had taken of his aunt’s concern, taking refuge, as many do, in hoping things were not as bad as they sometimes appeared. Long afterwards Clark could see with fateful hindsight how these circumstances had bound him and his life inextricably with events to come.
It was this personal entrapment that had enabled him to remain silent for so long after the climacteric to which these minor events were but the opening gambits. Perhaps too, his later secrecy was an expiation for his failure to perceive the seeds of tragedy, a tragedy which was as much personally as historically disastrous. But such consequences and reactions that bright morning as he went aboard the Ernest Shackleton lay far in the future.
In the weeks since his encounter with Kurt he had not seen his cousins at all. Clark had not returned to Altona to visit Johannes or his parents and, although he had observed a group of uniformed naval officers once or twice in the shipyard, he had not recognised Kurt among them.
But that morning he and Gerry Hunter walked into their meeting with the shipyard managers and found Kurt sitting at the table. There was a palpable air of awkwardness among the men, with whom they had discussed matters for months and whose moods and methods they had grown familiar with. The ship manager, Herr Eberbach, explained the presence of Korvettenkapitän Petersen as an observer and the discussion commenced. As they concluded and gathered up their papers, Kurt spoke for the first time. ‘You speak excellent German, Herr Clark.’
‘Thank you,’ responded Clark, meeting his cousin’s gaze and sensing the charade was for the benefit of Kurt’s fellow countrymen, if not a test of himself. ‘As I have told my friends here,’ he said, gesturing at the shipyard personnel, ‘I have German blood and it was a second language at home…’
He did not think he had ever said more than that to any of the casual acquaintances he had worked with in Hamburg, but he was not 100 per cent certain. No one seemed particularly interested, however, and if he had ever mentioned his relatives’ name to Gerry Hunter, the engineer did not appear to have made a connection with the dark-uniformed German naval officer just then rising from behind the table. Of course, he could not be sure, and the presence of the Korvettenkapitän seemed to inconvenience the men of the shipyard, so that Clark felt a lingering unease that he had let Kurt down.
‘I shall be interested in observing your inclining experiment,’ Kurt said conversationally, looking down at a paper before him. ‘And I see that is scheduled for next week. You will be ready for it I hope, Herr Eberbach?’
‘Certainly, Kapitän.’
‘And you are already bringing members of your crew over from England, Mr Clark?’
Clark met Kurt’s gaze and nodded. ‘I have requested them, yes, but I am waiting for confirmation from my owners.’
‘But you both hope to have the ship in commission by October?’ Kurt’s gesture took in both Clark and Eberbach.
‘By the end of the first week,’ Eberbach said emphatically.
‘Provided everything is in order and as promised,’ Clark added with a smile.
As the conference dispersed, Clark avoided Kurt’s eyes as he left the room with Hunter.
‘Something funny about that meeting,’ said Hunter the moment they were outside, so that Clark’s heart missed a beat and he felt the breath tight in his throat.
‘Yes,’ he managed, ‘the presence of that German naval officer…’
‘Oh no, it wasn’t that,’ Hunter broke in. ‘He wants the fitting-out berth, I heard. They’re now in a hurry, falling over themselves to oblige the navy. They’ve a hull in Bremen they want to tow round here to complete, so there’s no mystery in that. Old Korvetten-what’s-his-name just wanted to make sure that if the yard completed we’d have the ship away without a delay. No, it wasn’t that…’
It was odd how Hunter, with no knowledge of German, could find out so much more about what was going on in the yard than Clark himself, but he had little time for this reflection with the engineer in full flood.
‘I was just taken by the way Eberbach went all sheepish when I said that they were leaving the fitting of the poop accommodation and the completion of the centre-castle contactor houses a bit late. They’ve been dragging their heels on those areas for a fortnight now…’
‘They said there was a delay in the supply of switchgear and the accommodation won’t take long to finish off.’
‘Oh come on now, Jackie, don’t you go swallowing all that crap. Did you not see how that little bastard Kessler was grinning?’
‘The electrical foreman?’
‘That’s the one, the little weasel. And have you seen the badge he wears in his lapel? He’s a fucking Nazi right enough…’
‘Well, so what?’
‘Have you not yet rumbled the fact that the Nazis are a bunch of shits…?’
Clark laughed. This was Ulster prejudice taken too far! ‘So they’re like the Fenians, are they, Gerry?’
‘You can laugh, Jackie, but you mark my words! You get on to Liverpool and let’s get a crew and fuck off out of this place. I’ve had Hamburg up to my eyeballs. I don’t care if the firemen down aft sit and shit in buckets and I’ll build a contactor house myself wi’ a bit of help, but let’s get this ship to sea.’
They separated, Hunter to go and harass Kessler, and Clark to telephone Liverpool. In the little office he picked up the phone and got through to the shipyard’s switch-board. For twenty minutes he waited impatiently while the operator tried to contact Liverpool but in the end the poor girl admitted defeat.
‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘I’ll try again in an hour or two.’
He went back on board the ship and, for half an hour, immersed himself in checking through the specification. He was expecting a stores delivery that day and, to his delight, several large packages had been carried aboard and left in the near-completed wheelhouse. He knew what they were instantly, the folios of British Admiralty charts without which no Eastern Steam Navigation Company ship ventured far. They covered the entire world and came with sailing directions, the International Code of Signals manual, the company’s volume of Standing Orders and several other books and documents. A few minutes later one of the shipyards’ storemen, recognisable in the brown cotton overall coat worn by such functionaries, came into the chartroom, where Clark was putting the books in the neat shelves shiny with new varnish. The man carried a neat brown-paper-wrapped package in each hand.
‘Ah, the chronometers,’ Clark said with relish.
‘Good German chronometers, Herr Clark,’ the man said with a grin. ‘To go with your good German ship.’
Clark cut the sisal string round each, peeled back the paper and looked at the first of the clockfaces staring up at him from its double ring of brass gimballing. The name of the maker was set over the word: London.
‘These are…’ he began with mild astonishment, looking up, but the storeman pre-empted him and closed the chartroom door.
‘Yes, they’re British and,’ the man interrupted, speaking perfect English, ‘it pains me to have to tell you to leave them behind, but I take you for Mr John Clark.’
Clark frowned. ‘Yes, and who are you and,’ he added looking down at the chronometer face again, ‘what d’you mean by…?’
‘My name is Sanders and I’m from the British consulate. Be a good fellow and get your men together. I want you out of this country by tomorrow morning. You won’t get through to Dentco, the authorities here will prevent it. I don’t think they are interested in interning you or your colleague, but they want your ship and I’m afraid it looks as though they are going to get her by default. You must get yourself to the Hook of Holland and on a ferry to Harwich by tomorrow night.’
‘Why should the German authorities want this ship? I don’t understand… and if they do, I can’t just walk off…’
‘That’s exactly what I want you to do and what we have persuaded Dentco is the only solution to the problem. We had hoped to get her away before the situation became volatile, but Berlin and Moscow signed a non-aggression pact five days ago and we’ve just formalised our arrangements with Poland into a full alliance.’
‘Poland? What the hell has Poland…?’
‘There’s going to be a war, Mr Clark,’ Sanders said with a faint air of exasperation. ‘Or at least I think it most likely. I have been living with the possibility for weeks now while you, it seems,’ he added with a mild sarcasm of penetrating accuracy, ‘have been too involved with your ship to notice.’
‘A war?’
For a moment an incredulous Clark stood stock still and Sanders was intelligent enough to let the full import of his grave news sink in. Clark rallied his scepticism once more.
‘How do I know you are who you say you are? I mean, if the Germans want the ship, you could be…’
‘Yes, yes, I understand your misgivings, Mr Clark, but here…’ Sanders held out his diplomatic pass. ‘You’ll have to trust me, old man. I know you have German relatives…’
Clark’s response was sharp, prompted by an old family fear and compounded by his distaste for Johannes’ National Socialist dogma. ‘I hope that you don’t consider me a sympathiser with the German government,’ he snapped.
‘Get yourself and your men to the Hook, then. I’ll not be far behind you.’
‘You’ve known about this for some time,’ Clark said, pushing the chronometer, which, he found, he had been clutching to himself.
Sanders nodded. ‘As I have said, we hoped to get the ship completed before things got to this pass, but it’s too late for worrying about that now. Be on your way home and prove your patriotism. Dentco will approve, I assure you.’
Clark emerged from his shock under a flood of comprehension. ‘They do want the bloody ship, by God! That’s what Kur… Korvettenkapitän Petersen’s doing here! And that’s why they’re delaying work on the poop. There’ll be a gun there and others forward on the contactor houses! They’re going to make a commerce raider, or a Q-ship out of her!’
Sanders nodded again. ‘Bravo, Mr Clark.’ He sighed. ‘Now look, we’ve left all this a bit late, I’m afraid, so we’re going to provide you with transport. There will be a Volkswagen parked outside your hotel this evening. Get yourself to the Dutch border as quickly as you can and don’t hang about when you have crossed it. Get a train from Groningen to the Hook. I want you back home telling Dentco I’ve done my bit.’
‘Why don’t we sabotage the ship and prevent…’
‘Look, Clark, neither you nor I are Bulldog Drummond. Let’s just go home like good boys and then, if you feel so inclined, you can embark on any number of escapades.’
Clark felt suddenly foolish and nodded sheepishly, looking down at the exposed chronometer. ‘It seems a pity to leave this behind,’ he said.
‘Take it with you then if it bothers you,’ said Sanders curtly, ‘I’ve got other things to worry about.’
‘A Volkswagen, you say…?’
‘All ready to go. Full of fuel. You can drive, can’t you?’
‘Er, yes.’
‘And you have some money? A ship’s imprest, or something?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Then take the lot and consider yourself lucky we’re helping you to the extent we are. We don’t normally do so much for Distressed British Seamen.’
‘Is that what I am now? Most kind. I’d better go and find Hunter, the Second Engineer.’
‘Good idea, and by the way, I wouldn’t mention this to anyone apart from your colleague. Don’t say anything to the yard people. Just bugger off quietly at the end of the afternoon.’
‘They’re going to notice we’re not here tomorrow morning.’
‘Well,’ Sanders shrugged, ‘so be it.’ He held out his hand. ‘Goodbye and good luck. I think we’re going to need quite a lot of it.’
Clark could not find Hunter immediately. A workman in the engine room told him that he had heard the Irishman talking to one of the chargehands and they had gone aft to take a look at the steering gear. When Clark reached the steering flat it proved empty, though its steel door was tied back and it smelt of wet paint. He stared briefly at the gleaming quadrant which seemed ready for instant use. As he hung a moment in the doorway, Clark felt a creeping anger that it would be a Nazi voice that would order its first operational movement. Ironically, his ‘God damn!’ of fury was enunciated in his perfect German.
As he went ashore it occurred to him that he ought to try and get through to Liverpool again. If he understood the spirit of Sanders’ instructions, he should behave normally. Once again, he could not get through. It was clear now that he was not meant to, and he recalled being cut off when he had last spoken to Wilson.
‘Well, I’m damned,’ he muttered in English.
It was when he left the shore office and began to hurry back to the ship that he bumped into Kessler.
‘Herr Clark, you are in a hurry…’
‘There is a great deal to be done, Herr Kessler, as you know. Have you seen Mr Hunter?’
‘I have just come from speaking with him. He is in the conference room, talking with Korvettenkapitän Petersen. Korvettenkapitän Petersen is most interested in the engines, you know, and the maximum speed of your ship. I have told him that she is designed for eighteen knots. That is correct, is it not? But I expect that she can make twenty!’
‘Excuse me, Herr Kessler…’
‘Of course, Herr Clark. I had forgotten you were in a hurry.’
Clark found Hunter in the meeting room alone with Kurt. He stared from one to the other, not sure what to make of this odd mismatch under the circumstances.
‘Ah, Jack, there you are,’ Hunter said, turning to face his shipmate. ‘The captain here has been telling why he is interested in the ship’s movements. It’s just like I guessed, the German Navy is fitting out some naval auxiliaries in this yard and they want our berth…’
‘I see.’ Clark’s heart was hammering in his chest. ‘Well Gerry, we have some problems arising on board…’
‘Nothing serious, I hope, Herr Clark,’ Kurt broke in, catching Clark’s eye.
‘Er, that depends upon whose point of view you are taking,’ Clark responded, holding his cousin’s gaze and feeling a tightening of the muscles in his gut. ‘It’s pretty bad for us… on the ship…’
‘What the fuck’s up?’ Hunter asked, standing up in a posture of alarm.
Clark turned to Hunter. ‘Bit of a problem on board, Gerry. Not something we can talk about in front of strangers.’ He threw Kurt a final glance with the last word and saw a slight frown cross his cousin’s face. ‘I’ll see you in the chartroom in half an hour. In the meantime, I want a word with the Captain here, and I think you should take a look at the steering gear.’
He watched with relief as Hunter reacted. ‘What the fuck have the bastards done? It was all right an hour ago.’
‘Go and have a look,’ Clark said coldly, adding, ‘and I’ll see you in the chartroom in half an hour.’
‘I’ll be there, don’t you worry!’ Fuelled with uncertainty and concern Hunter hurried from the room.
Shutting the door behind him, Clark rounded on his cousin. ‘You might have told me you were intending to take over my ship!’
‘I’m sorry, but how do you know?’
‘I’ve just been ordered to head for the Hook of Holland!’
‘Who by?’ Kurt frowned.
‘The British consulate.’
‘God damn!’
‘I understand that war is imminent.’ The impact of these words clearly surprised Kurt.
‘No! Not between England and Germany! If we requisition a ship being built in Germany we would pay compensation.’
‘You are beginning to sound like a Nazi. Who are you going to go to war with? I know it isn’t the Communists, you’ve just signed a pact with Moscow…’
Kurt’s mouth dropped open in unfeigned astonishment. ‘How do you know that?’
‘How do you?’ Clark responded.
‘I don’t.’ Kurt looked genuinely astonished. ‘I have no knowledge of any pact with the Soviet Union.’
‘Well, I have to be gone, cousin, and we look like becoming enemies.’
‘No, this is not possible,’ Kurt said, clearly distressed, his voice edged with despair and desperation. ‘Not even Adolf Hitler would want to go to war with Great Britain, while it is impossible he has allied himself with the Communists!’
Clark’s news had quite clearly discomposed his cousin, who ran his hand through his hair in a frantic motion.
‘I hope you are right, Kurt, but I am not keen to hang about on your evaluation of the situation. There is clearly a requirement in the minds of your masters for my ship…’
‘Yes, but that is part of a long-term plan… My God, what am I saying?’ Kurt paused and stared at Clark. The admission was quickly followed by the true state of Kurt’s thoughts. ‘When are you going?’ he asked, swiftly adding, ‘You must take Magda with you.’
‘What?’
‘Get her out of Germany for me! Please, I beg you!’
‘For God’s sake, Kurt…’
‘I’ll get you a car…’
‘I’ve got one.’
‘Good! Tell me where to be with her. What time are you going? Come, quickly, I don’t want to be found talking to you like this!’ Sweat stood out like glass beads on Kurt’s forehead and he moved like a chained dog.
‘I can’t just take Magda…’
‘Why? I know hundreds of Jews have gone to England since the Night of Broken Glass. Even you have heard of that, for God’s sake!’
‘Yes, of course, but what’s the panic? A few businesses smashed up…’
‘Good God, it was more than that! Why do you think so many Jewish families abandoned their livelihoods here? They are being treated like shit, Jack, you really have no idea!’ Kurt paused as Clark wrestled with his conscience. He and Hunter had a car. It should not be too difficult, simply driving across the border into the Netherlands. What had he got to fear? They could pretend Magda was his girlfriend… Yes, that was it.
‘All right, I’ll do it.’
‘Thank God.’ Relief was plain on Kurt’s face. ‘Tell me where you will pick her up.’
‘At the tram stop.’
‘You’ll come out to Altona?’ Kurt’s delight was manifest. ‘You are a true friend, Jack. God bless you!’ Kurt paused a moment, tears filled his eyes and then, clapping Clark on the shoulders, he said, ‘I must go.’
A moment later Clark was walking back to the ship. The sun rode high in the blue sky but the glory had gone out of the day. It was then that he realised that to drive out to Altona took him in the wrong direction, away from the Elbe tunnel and the Reichsbahn to Bremen and the Dutch border beyond.
‘Bollocks!’ he swore in English.