Turn Left for Gibraltar by David Black

Author:David Black [Black, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781477819494
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2017-04-04T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

It had been a big wave. Umbrage had begun to rise on it, and it had broken over them, right at the same time as Harry had been calling out, ‘Aircraft!’ and not hearing what the CO had been screaming back. The Leading Stoker on the dive board hadn’t heard either, but he had heard, ‘Aircraft!’ And he knew only too well how the CO’s wrath fell upon any hapless Jack who didn’t jump fast enough, sometimes even before he’d been told to. So he’d asked himself: what normally happens the minute someone shouts, ‘Aircraft!’ You dive the boat. So he had dived the boat. Harry would worry what to do about him later. Right now he had the Cox’n, Chief Roscorla, Parry-Jones, and the Warrant Engineer, Mr Crabtree, in the control room and they needed to discuss matters.

‘Firstly, gentlemen, we have a conning tower full of water above us. I intend to stabilise the boat before any attempt is made to recover the CO,’ said Harry, in charge now. He hadn’t made any announcement to that effect; he didn’t have to. Umbrage had only two officers left standing, and Harry was the senior one.

Umbrage’s four most senior rates each nodded grimly. Stabilising the boat? Mr Gilmour would get no argument out of them about that. That water had to go. A conning tower full of it made them unstable, especially in that transition from dived to surface. Right now, they were still at sixty feet, steering 110 degrees, and their motors delivering revs for three knots, just enough to counter the deep current trying to wash them into the western basin.

‘The conning tower drain valves are working, Sir,’ Parry-Jones had told Harry, ‘but there’s no water coming through the system. It’s blocked somewhere.’

Harry took his cap off and rubbed his face, as if trying to rub into it all the coolness and detachment he felt a CO needed to show his crew at a time like this, but struggling. Thinking to himself, What next? Mr Crabtree cleared his throat. ‘We have a set of separators, Sir. I can prise the hatch off its seal without you having to open it. It’ll let the water jet out of the hatch. But it’ll take a while.’

Harry looked at them all in turn. ‘I don’t see what good draining water out of the lower hatch is going to do, if the upper hatch is open to the sea.’

‘Actually, Sir,’ said Parry-Jones, ‘I think there might be some good news . . .’ and he trailed off, looking at Big Jonners. And Big Jonners said, ‘We don’t think the conning tower is full of water, Sir. Me and Mr Parry-Jones, we think the CO shut it before he . . . well, was lost.’

Harry didn’t dare ask, he just stared hard, willing the news to justify their optimism.

Parry-Jones spoke first, being the Outside ERA and knowing about trim. ‘It doesn’t feel as though the tower is actually full, Sir. We’ve kept a

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