The Death of Hope by Andrew Wareham (inspirational books for women txt) 📕

“Not a great chance of hitting with the torpedoes.No certainty even of firing them. Is the captain aware, sir?”

“He discounts them in any case. Goodgunnery at close range, using HE for best effect. No need to worry about damnednew inventions when firing at a thousand yards, Adams!”

“I met that attitude on Connaught, sir.The Gunnery Officer there could not believe in armour-piercing. Fortunately, thetarget was an ancient Austrian predreadnought at anchor and two out of fourtorpedoes from our consort hit her. Twenty-one inch and squarely amidships, oneof them, destroying the boiler room. No nets or booms in the way. She turnedturtle in minutes. Even on such an old vessel, her armour was sufficient thatHE had very little effect. Same at the Falkland Isles. The Germans had expendedall of their armour-piercing at Coronel and the HE did not penetrate Invincibleor Indefatigable. Killed one man, their sole effect. A touch-up of thepaintwork and off we went. Fortunate, that was.”

The Commander had heard that the battlehad been less glorious than the newspapers had announced, knew none of thedetail. Christopher had pleasure informing him.

“Three percent accuracy at range. Lessthan fifty at two thousand yards, you say, Adams?”

“Seen by my own eyes, sir. I was counting.”

“Good God! I wonder, would we do anybetter?”

Christopher thought it might be tactless toanswer.

“A change, gentlemen! We are to spend aweek at Queensferry, replacing our searchlight in the yard and changing some ofthe three pounders for anti-aircraft guns, of all things!”

The Captain was openly scornful of theimposition of such innovations on his ship. He turned to his senior officers,gathered in his cabin.

“Aeroplanes! Who cares about them? Haveany of you seen an aeroplane at sea?”

The question had been asked and could notbe ducked. Christopher raised a finger.

“An Austrian seaplane, sir. Off Split. Lookingfor Connaught after she sank the old battleship there.”

“Reconnaissance, you say, Adams?”

“Yes, sir. Rather foolishly, it dropped apair of tiny hand grenades which left a soot mark on one of the main batteryturrets. I suppose, sir, that if they had been lucky and had dropped on theopen upper bridge, then we might have lost officers. Chances were against it.If aeroplanes get bigger, and carry larger bombs, then a flotilla of a dozenall attacking at once could do great harm. At the moment, sir, I do not thinkwe need fear them.”

The Captain snorted. He had been about tosay the same. Now, he had to think of something different because his rankdemanded he should have the last word.

“Well put, Adams. What I will say, thinkingon it, is that we don’t want scouting aeroplanes with these damned wirelessessending back details of where we are and what we are doing. Bad enough to haveZeppelins wandering about. Can see them at least, even if we can’t do much aboutthem. They are going to give us four three inch twelve pounders with some sortof special shell – timed fuses or some such thing to explode in the air. Noneed to make a direct hit. Means we need another twenty men, Guns. See to theirmessing with your division. Get them some practice as soon as we leaveQueensferry.”

The Gunnery Officer signified hisunderstanding of the order, shaking his head unhappily. The mess decks on BlackPrince were already overcrowded with additional wartime postings; where to putanother twenty men was beyond him.

The Commander tapped Guns’ shoulder.

“See me afterwards, Guns. I can find an unusedcompartment. Belonged to the band and we have set them ashore.”

The remainder of the daily meeting driftedto its end, nothing else of importance mentioned. The Captain said that theAdmiral was disappointed in the general level of smartness of the Grand Fleet.He had seen a number of slack pulling boats in the Sound, reminded all ships ofthe need to turn their boats’ crews out smartly.

“Provisioning, gentlemen! The boats were returningfrom the butchery with sheep and bullock carcasses, recently slaughtered andrunning blood. What does he expect? No captain is going to dress his men innumber ones just to get them ruined with blood and guts! Getting the twitch, ifyou ask me, sitting on his backside up here instead of sailing out to seek battle.Not the way Nelson ran a war!”

The officers left, smiling openly at thesedisloyal words. None of them wanted to stay another day at Scapa Flow; all werewilling by then to sail direct to the Kattegat and round Denmark in a greatassault on the Baltic Sea and Kiel and to hell with minefields and submarines both.

“Queensferry this afternoon, Adams. Ginpennant flying as soon as we are tied up.”

Christopher welcomed the prospect. The ginpennant – an invitation to all ships’ wardrooms to come aboard for a drink –was long overdue. He was looking forward to seeing new faces, talking todifferent people.

“What’s in port, sir?”

“The Battlecruiser Division, eight of them.Defence and Warrior of the armoured cruisers. Six flotillas of destroyers. That’sall of the respectable ships. The submarines are at their own base and won’tjoin us. Minesweepers and such are all reservist boats, won’t go poking theirnoses in with their betters.”

“I might find an hour to go aboard some ofthe trawlers, sir, especially if the Star boats are based here. Remarkableseamen those Arctic trawler skippers, sir. Rough men but sound – willing totell an admiral exactly where to put his orders when they didn’t like them!”

The Commander was not certain that was agood thing.

The evening was long and wet, all of theofficers rolling into their bunks more or less the worse for wear. It made apleasant change.

Christopher surfaced with a memory of acceptingan invitation to attend a ball of some sorts – the Lord Provost of Edinburgh,he believed. He made his way to the wardroom for breakfast, glanced at the noticeboard,newly decorated with cards of invitation. He was right, there was a ball thatevening. It would make a pleasant change, it was years since he had put on hisbest bib and tucker, his smartest dress uniform. He called his servant to digit out of his trunk and to set to with smoothing iron and produce a perfect dressshirt as well.

It was quite like old days