The Lines of Laredo (New England Book 7) by James Philip

Author:James Philip [Philip, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-19T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Monday 13th November

HMNB Vancouver, Protectorate of British Columbia

Commander Alexander Lincoln Fielding, RNAS had jogged down the gangway the moment he received word that his wife was on the quayside.

HMS Ulysses was preparing to go to sea as dusk settled over the bustling port. The light cruisers of the Scouting Division – the Dido and the Diadem - had already led their destroyers out to sea, and in the main channel two heavy cruisers, every inch only slightly scaled-down versions of the North West Squadron’s flagship, the mighty HMS Lion were readying to up anchor on the tide to escort the huge aircraft carrier out of the anchorage.

The Lion would be sitting this one out, she was in dry dock undergoing the refit she ought to have received that summer, and although she had suffered no actual battle damage, in retrospect, the Battle of the Gulf of Alaska, as the showdown with the Russian Siberian Fleet was now being called, had taken an unseen toll on her. In the end she had returned to Vancouver with two of her four turbine rooms shut down and one boiler room evacuated because a worn high-pressure steam line that should have been replaced around the time of the Empire Day atrocities, had finally failed – in a big way – injuring over twenty men. Moreover, it transpired that the repeated concussions from a day’s full-bore shooting with her 15-inchers had well and truly shaken loose, all manner of things, and was going to necessitate the removal and reseating of her No. 3 main battery, ‘X’ turret, which had jammed, traversed sixteen degrees to port near the conclusion of the fight. Not to put too fine point on it, Rear Admiral Sir Cedric Blackwood had pushed his flagship so hard that he had very nearly ‘broken’ the great ship!

Fortunately, not before he had mercilessly vanquished the King’s ill-advised enemies in the most spectacular of fashions, a thing recognised by the gazetting of his forthcoming promotion to Vice Admiral, effective 1st January 1979, and the news that the King had made it be known that he intended to raise the victor of the great battle to the peerage in the forthcoming New Year’s Honours List.

In any event, for the duration of OPERATION GRINGO, Blackwood had shifted his flag to the fifteen-thousand-ton Naiad, presently moored a cable-length to the west of her sister, Charybdis. Beyond them the sad remnants of Count Pushkin’s shattered Amerikanskiy flot – America Fleet - rode at anchor deeper into the harbour, or tied up alongside the docks on the north side of the port. Those ships – the largest an antique armoured cruiser of the type the Royal Navy had sent to the breakers yard over four decades ago – were tragically sad reminders of all the brave men who had died out in the frigid, grey waters to the north west.

Many of the Russian survivors had already begun their long journeys home, via the trans-continental railways to St John’s, there

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