The Custom of the Trade Read online

  The Custom of the Trade

  Shaun Lewis

  © Shaun Lewis 2017

  Shaun Lewis has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2017.

  This edition published by Endeavour Media in 2018.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  "The Trade"

  Rudyard Kipling

  They bear, in place of classic names,

  Letters and numbers on their skin.

  They play their grisly blindfold games

  In little boxes made of tin.

  Sometimes they stalk the Zeppelin,

  Sometimes they learn where mines are laid,

  Or where the Baltic ice is thin.

  That is the custom of "The Trade."

  Chapter 1

  March 1912

  Just eleven years ago, the current First Sea Lord, Sir Arthur Wilson VC, had described the submarine as, ‘Underhand, unfair and damned un-English’. The commanding officer of HM Submarine D2, Lieutenant Harold Johnson, thought the admiral was wrong. As the captain raised his binoculars to sweep the horizon, the gold rings on his reefer jacket faintly reflected the light of the lookout’s cigarette. In fact, after so many years on the open bridges of submarines, the gold had turned a dull green, save for the newer, thin half-ring in the middle that showed him to be a lieutenant of over eight years’ seniority and thus senior in rank to his second-in-command, also a lieutenant. Johnson had every reason to be pleased with himself. He was sad to be leaving his command, of course, but it had been a successful one and he was looking forward to his staff appointment ashore. Over the past twenty-one months he had welded the ship’s company into a highly effective team that would be a great credit to the Service in the event of war with Germany. They had acquitted themselves well during their first operational patrol the previous year and had recently shown their worth in a series of exercises with the Home Fleet off Scotland. He had been pleased that during these exercises it had finally no longer been mandatory for D2 to be accompanied by a ship flying a red flag to mark the submarine’s position. This rather stupid requirement had been abolished by the new Inspecting Captain of Submarines, Roger Keyes. Although Keyes was not a submariner, Johnson thought him blessed with tremendous energy and attacking spirit. Keyes seemed determined that the new submarine service should be an integrated offensive arm of the Royal Navy.

  That hadn’t been trouble-free, though. It was Keyes who had approved his plan to take the submarine secretly through the Firth of Forth, escaping detection by the Navy patrols and overcoming the navigational difficulties of the strong tides and narrow waters. With some élan, he thought, he had then surfaced D2 off Rosyth Dockyard and announced that, had he been a German U-boat captain, he could have successfully torpedoed the two cruisers lying at anchor off the dockyard. The Commander-in-Chief had had a sense of humour failure and ordered him to appear in ‘full sword and medals’ for an ill-tempered dressing-down. However, Keyes had commended him. He thought it a valuable lesson to be laid before the Admiralty and the CO didn’t think it would harm his promotion prospects.

  Johnson’s feeling of well-being on the passage home had been enhanced by the signal D2 had received on surfacing. The W/T office had informed him that his wife had given birth to their first child, a healthy boy at eight pounds and six ounces. He could not wait to return to the submarine’s base at Harwich and take a few days’ leave with his wife and new child in his home in Hampshire. The change in appointment could not have come at a better time. He now had a fair chance of spending prolonged periods in harbour as an instructor in HMS Dolphin, an old sailing brig based at Fort Blockhouse, the alma mater of the submarine force. Nevertheless, fate was taking a hand in delaying D2’s return to harbour at present.

  He had surfaced the submarine off Aldeburgh and had imagined an easy and uneventful surface passage of just a few hours down the east coast to the Channel. Instead, not only had they encountered thick fog, but one of the diesel engines had developed a defect and had to be shut down. He had consequently been forced to reduce speed to balance the battery output across the two propellers and to signal his motor launch escort that he would be late in his return to Harwich. It was already dark and visibility very poor, so much so that he had lost sight of the escort’s lights. He judged that, if anything, the visibility was deteriorating and had closed up extra lookouts, one of whom had excellent hearing. The lookout had just reported the noise of a steam-driven engine, fine on the port bow. Johnson checked his watch. It was 19.45, almost time for the lookouts to be relieved and for the First Lieutenant to take the watch on the bridge. He felt uneasy. He hailed the control room through the voice pipe.

  ‘Control room, Captain. Tell the First Lieutenant to delay the watch change. There’s a ship out ahead and I want to keep these lookouts until the danger has passed. As a precaution, shut and clip all collision bulkheads and the lower lid until further notice.’

  Like all submariners he always used the word ‘shut’ in place of ‘close’ or ‘closed’ as it was less likely to be misunderstood through a muffled voice pipe. The First Lieutenant himself, Lieutenant Richard Miller, acknowledged the order from the control room. ‘Aye aye, sir. Delay the watch change and shut and clip the collision bulkheads and lower lid until further notice. First Lieutenant here, sir. Would you like me to come to the bridge before we shut the lower lid, sir?’

  Johnson thought it typical of his First Lieutenant to be in the control room at the right time. He was off watch and should have been relaxing in the wardroom. It was a comfort. His second-in-command must have sensed his anxiety. By shutting the lower hatch between the conning tower and control room, he was preventing the passage of personnel to and from the bridge. The order to clip the collision bulkheads was also restricting free movement throughout the submarine and would delay the watch changes of all the crew.

  ‘No, thanks, Number One. I would welcome your presence down below, just in case. Check the chart for me and tell me how much room you judge I have to starboard and still remain in the southbound channel.’

  Johnson was in a quandary about Miller. He had been particularly pleased with Miller’s performance in action and as his second-in-command. Professionally, Miller seemed exemplary, but he also had his faults. He was rather an aloof character who seemed ill at ease with the men. As such, he struggled to build a rapport with them and establish the right sort of team spirit. Whilst the ship’s company was starting to respect him for his competence, it was clear they did not like him much. That mattered little. It was not necessary for an officer to be liked by his men, but the men had his sympathy, nonetheless. He regretted that Miller rode them too hard. He seemed completely intolerant of any failure. It was true that Miller was equally uncompromising concerning his own standards, but was Miller capable of humanity and understanding towards those mere mo
rtals blessed with less talent? This was odd, as Miller’s other failing was his unbending Christian convictions.

  Like most naval officers, Johnson was himself a Christian and rarely failed to hold Divine Service on a Sunday, but he did not impose his faith on others. Miller was too evangelical for his own good. He neither smoked nor drank alcohol, and would not tolerate swearing in his presence. This hardly endeared him to the bunch of semi-piratical heathens that formed the typical submarine ship’s company.

  Johnson used his binoculars to sweep the invisible horizon once more. Miller’s character defects and idiosyncrasies would have to wait. Before taking up his leave, he would be calling on the Inspecting Captain of Submarines and fully intended discussing his second-in-command’s performance with Captain Keyes. Once his successor had settled in to his new command, it would be Miller’s turn for a new appointment and he hoped he could persuade Keyes that, despite Miller’s weaknesses, he should now be groomed for a command of his own.

  ‘Captain, sir, First Lieutenant. Our position is just inside the channel, by dead reckoning. You could come to starboard a mile and still have sufficient water to dive if you had to, notwithstanding the pool of errors. All collision bulkhead doors and the lower lid shut and clipped, sir.’

  ‘Very good. Starboard ten. Steer one-nine-five.’

  ‘Starboard ten. Steer one-nine-five. Ten of starboard wheel on, sir.’ The helmsman followed the submarine service practice of repeating back the order word for word to demonstrate that he had understood it.

  ‘Course one-nine-five, sir.’

  The captain glanced over his shoulder. He could just make out the phosphorescence of the submarine’s turning wake and estimated that visibility was no more than fifty to eighty yards. He felt increasingly uneasy and the hairs on the back of his neck started to rise. If his sixth sense was correct, he might soon need maximum battery power for an emergency dive.

  ‘Control room, Captain. Stop the starboard diesel engine. Group up.’

  As soon as the din of the diesel engine ceased, he heard the hammering sound of a steam engine, still to starboard. How could that be? The vessel had been on his port bow and, by making a decisive turn to starboard, he should have opened his distance off track and avoided the risk of a collision. Then the noise stopped suddenly, but was replaced by the deep throb of a diesel engine about fifteen degrees on the starboard bow. Suddenly, he realised his error.

  ‘Hard-a-starboard. Full astern together,’ he screamed urgently.

  There were two vessels out there, one to port and another to starboard, and probably a pair of trawlers. The steam engine they had heard was undoubtedly the noise of a steam winch as the trawlers set or raised their nets. If he was right, he couldn’t dive for fear of being caught in the net.

  As the submarine began to turn and its forward movement slowed, the dark shape of an unlit trawler appeared fine on the starboard bow. At a range of just fifty yards the two vessels were close enough for the submarine’s bridge team to hear the sound of shouting from the deck of the trawler. The trawler was steering north-west and the crew must have just spotted the lights of D2 or even her low, dark shape. Instinctively, the trawler skipper obeyed the international rule of the sea in such circumstances and spun the wheel to starboard.

  ‘You bastard!’ Johnson shouted. The skipper’s instinctive action to turn to starboard rather than to port had unintentionally made it inevitable that there would be a collision.

  Seconds later, the trawler struck D2 on the starboard bow, ten feet aft of the starboard hydroplane. The submarine rocked to port and, for perhaps thirty seconds, the two vessels remained locked together. The submarine’s bridge crew were knocked off their feet by the violence of the shock and their captain struck his head against the bridge rail, falling dead instantly.

  With an agonising screech of grinding metal, the trawler’s bow fell away and water immediately gushed into the gaping hole left behind in the pressure hull. Within seconds, D2 plunged under the sea towards the bottom, leaving the four bridge lookouts and their dead commanding officer floating in the water.

  *

  Eva Keyes was woken by the ringing of the telephone in the hall of the Fareham home she shared with her husband. Who on earth could be ringing at this time of night? It could only be for Roger and she nudged him in an effort to wake him. As usual, he merely grunted and went back to sleep. Throughout their five years of happily married life, this habit had always irritated Eva. Only two years earlier, Keyes had been in command of HMS Venus. He claimed that the experience had taught him to be a light sleeper and instantly awake when called from the bridge at night. Eva didn’t believe a word of it. It was one of his many inconsistencies. During the day, she knew few people with as much energy and swiftness of action, but once he hit the pillow, he was dead to the world. Perhaps it was the sign of a guilt-free conscience. No, this really would not do. If she didn’t do something, the telephone would ring all night. Mustering all her energy, she rolled Keyes out of the bed and let him fall to the floor with a hefty thump. Keyes woke instantly.

  ‘What the hell?’ he cried.

  ‘Roger, the telephone is ringing downstairs. Go and answer it.’

  Awake at last, Keyes was immediately a man of action again. Without even pausing to put on his dressing gown and slippers, he leapt down the stairs to the hall.

  *

  Keyes bounded from the carpeted stairs to the tiled floor of the hall and instantly regretted the absence of his slippers. After crossing the moonlit hall, he picked up the receiver to end the shrill ringing.

  ‘Keyes,’ he answered curtly.

  ‘Hello, sir. It’s Commander Woodall, the duty commander at the Admiralty. I’m sorry to disturb you at this time of night, but it is rather urgent.’

  ‘Go on.’ He was not in the mood for small talk at this hour and he noted from the moonlight’s reflection on the grandfather clock that it was barely half past three.

  ‘We’ve had a report from Harwich coastguard that a trawler suffered a collision with a submarine last night. At about 20.00 and four miles south of Orford Ness. It was thick fog and they didn’t see her until too late. The submarine went down, but they fished two seamen and a corpse out of the sea. According to the survivors, the submarine was D2 and the corpse was their captain, Lieutenant Johnson. There are still two men missing, but the skipper dropped a Dan buoy to mark the position and his partner is searching for the missing men.’

  ‘My God,’ Keyes said quietly. It was only yesterday that he had sent the signal to inform Johnson of the birth of his son. ‘Where the bloody hell was her escort?’

  ‘Lost her in the fog, it seems, sir. The launch is mounting a search for the missing men, but it won’t be easy at night and in thick fog. I doubt they’ll have much to report before daylight, sir.’

  ‘What action have you taken?’

  ‘I’ve alerted C-in-C Nore and he’s despatching Indomitable, three RNR trawlers and a tug to the scene. They should be on task within the next four hours, soon after first light. He’s also sending the Chatham diving team and their tender as soon as it’s light.’

  ‘Why is Poore sending Reserve trawlers? He surely doesn’t expect to fish D2 from the deep?’

  ‘No, sir. It was actually one of Admiral Poore’s staff that suggested it. They’ve been experimenting with grappling hooks, fitted to wires, to sweep for moored mines and somebody thought they could do the same to try to locate your submarine.’

  ‘I like it. I could do with that officer on my staff. I’m sorry. Do carry on.’

  ‘Vice Admiral Colville will be the on-scene commander, sir, and he already has a couple of passing destroyers in the area. We’ve also contacted the Liverpool Salvage Company and they are sending a salvage ship, the Ranger, to the area with immediate despatch, but its ETA is not for thirty-six hours.’

  ‘That’s too late. The men will have asphyxiated by then. Is there nothing else?’

  ‘Not with large enough cranes to
lift a vessel of this size, sir. We estimate the depth of water to be about eighteen fathoms. We’re talking to a company in Tilbury with a floating crane platform and hope to get it towed to the site fairly quickly. It might be useful for lowering equipment or something, but it’s not up to the job of lifting a submarine. They are also sending a diving bell to the scene. We have requested the Foreign Office to contact the Germans, to check whether they might have a suitable vessel available, but it will be a few hours before we hear anything back. In the meantime, the salvage company are sending one of their top men to the scene, a Captain Young, to help co-ordinate the rescue. We’ve arranged for the Flying Corps to fly him down from Liverpool at first light. There will also be another team of divers leaving Portsmouth Dockyard by road first thing in the morning, sir. They’re just assembling now and getting together their equipment. I assume you will be attending the scene, sir?’

  ‘You’re damned right I’ll be there. I’m leaving in thirty minutes. Tell them to expect me at Harwich. I shall want a full briefing on my arrival.’

  ‘Fine, sir. Is there anything else you think we should do?’

  ‘It sounds like you have the situation in hand. Actually, there is something else you can do. Contact Fort Blockhouse for me. Tell them to arrange for any of the D-boat COs and Chief ERAs in harbour to get their backsides up to Harwich, PDQ. We’ll benefit from some specialist expertise. You might also warn my staff to dig out the next of kin details in case this all goes badly wrong.’

  Keyes replaced the earpiece of the telephone receiver and sat down, stunned. This was every submariner’s nightmare. Nobody had ever yet survived such an accident. Although not a submariner himself, Keyes knew only too well the slow and dreadful death the crew of the submarine would face as the oxygen levels diminished and the carbon dioxide levels from their exhaled breath concentrated. He half hoped that seawater had already flooded the hull and mixed with the battery to create chlorine gas. Although chlorine gas poisoning would still be an agonising death, it at least had the merit of being relatively quick. Either way, it would be a tragic way to die for such promising young men. As he thought of their icy, watery grave, his brain reminded him of the coldness of his feet and he was brought to action.