Atlantic Fury by Innes Hammond;

Author:Innes, Hammond;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller
Published: 2016-06-13T04:00:00+00:00

The time was then 08.35 and Braddock had been almost six hours in the Movements Office, waiting for news. God knows what he must have been feeling. Flint said he’d paced up and down, hour after hour, grey-faced and silent, whilst the periodic reports came through from our own radio operator and from the man on L4400. Up to the moment when disaster overtook us Movements had a fairly clear picture of what was happening. And then suddenly that Mayday call, and after that silence. ‘Get them,’ Braddock had shouted at the Signals operator. ‘Christ, man! Get them again.’ But all the operator could get was L4400 announcing flatly that they were in the storm centre steaming for the shelter of the other side of the island.

‘It’s Eight-six-one-o I want,’ Braddock had almost screamed. ‘Get them, man. Keep on trying.’

He’d had far too little sleep that night and the interview he’d had with Standing at two-thirty in the morning cannot have been a pleasant one. Standing had been roused from his bed by a duty driver at twelve-forty, and Ferguson described him as literally shaking with rage when he realised what Braddock had done. The first thing he did was to speak to Stratton on the R/T and then he walked across to the quarters and saw Cliff Morgan. ‘White-faced he was, man,’ was the way Cliff put it. ‘Calling me all sorts of names for interfering. But when I’d explained the situation, he calmed down a bit. He even thanked me. And then he went out, saying it was all Braddock’s fault and if anything went wrong he’d get the bloody man slung out of the Service.’

Standing had gone straight to his office and sent for Braddock. There was nobody else present at that meeting so that there is no record of what passed between them. But immediately afterwards Braddock had teleprinted BGS direct, giving his reasons for ordering an immediate evacuation on his own responsibility. And after that he’d remained in the Movements Office waiting for news; and when our Mayday call went out, it was he, not Standing, who had alerted Scottish Command and set the whole emergency machinery in motion. At half past eight he’d walked over to the Met. Office. He was with Cliff Morgan for about ten minutes and it was during those ten minutes that I called Base. A relief operator had just taken over, which was why I was given the Glasgow call instead of being put straight through either to Braddock at the Met. Office or Standing, who was waiting alone in his office.

Probably if I’d got Standing his reaction would have been as slow as my brother’s, for neither of them could have any idea of the appalling ferocity of that storm or the magnitude of the disaster. He didn’t seem able to understand at first. ‘You and one other chap … Is that all? Are you certain?’

I wasn’t certain of anything except the memory of the ship on her beam ends and the waves driving her against the rocks.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.