What Cares The Sea?

222

PROLOGUE

Seventeen years have passed since the Lulworth Hill was sunk and I and thirteen of my shipmates pulled ourselves out of the Atlantic onto a small raft and began what must surely be one of the most terrible voyages of all history—a voyage that only I have survived. These seventeen years have been crowded with incident for me, but I should be less than honest if I said that they were any more real or important than those fifty days I spent in 1943, bobbing aimlessly and seemingly hopelessly about on the indifferent sea while my friends died one by one.

I have spent a good part of these seventeen years trying to forget those horrible fifty days. I have failed. Those days have always been with me; they shall always be with me. I might have written this story years ago, but I thought that to dwell upon all the horror and tragedy would be a weakness. I was determined to look ahead, not back. But now I have learned that for me the past, the present and the future are all bound up together. There is no escaping from those fifty days. They are part of my life, and I would not deny any part of my life, for I love life (even the terrible parts of it) too much ever to deny it.

So I have finally written the story of what happened to my comrades and me during those awful days. I am not a professional writer, and I have no intention of ever becoming one. I am solely concerned in this narrative with telling the true story of our voyage; I have not tried to invent anything. I still have in my possession the sailcloth log that I kept during those fifty days. The entries that I made seventeen years ago have helped me to remember many details and many actual conversations that took place on the raft. Obviously, however, I have not been able to recall everything exactly the way it happened or exactly the way certain things were said, but in essence I have attempted to recreate the incidents and the words to the best of my ability.

Over the years, my wife Kathleen and I have seen many films and television programs about ship wrecks and ship sinkings and about men on lifeboats and on rafts. The men in these films are always portrayed as a cheerful lot, laughing, telling jokes, singing, keeping their own and each other’s spirits up. As I watch these films, I find myself saying to Kathleen, But that isn’t the way it happened. That isn’t the way it happened to me at all.

On the following pages I have tried to tell the way it happened to me. It isn’t a nice story, but it is a true one—as true as I can remember it, anyway. And there is no one left now to tell me I have remembered badly.

Kenneth Cooke

Thimbleby, Yorkshire

BEFORE

The S.S. Lulworth Hill started her voyage as she was to end it, swathed in mist.

She was a handsome new ship, registered in London, and built only in 1940. Yes, she was a handsome vessel, oil-burning, and possessing lines that for a tramp steamer were very fine indeed. The fifty-seven members of the officers and crew were all proud of her as we left the Humber river behind and started around north for the Atlantic, where we were to pick up our convoy.

A few hours out we passed my home town of Bridlington, and although I was sorry not to take a last look at the cheerful little pleasure resort, I could not bring myself to curse the mist that hid it. That mist also hid us from the eyes of enemy raiders, and with 7,000 tons of high-explosive 250-lb. bombs on board, not one of us was anxious to run foul of torpedoes or enemy air attack.

It took us three days to get around the Scottish coast. Dusk had fallen by the time we joined our convoy. Next day I counted fifty-seven steel walls of Old England—a magnificent sight and a comforting one, when a chap added to that number a handsome pack of frigates and corvettes which, led by a highly aloof destroyer, formed our escort.

In spite of the strength of our escort, we ran into trouble when only seven hours out. Not us personally, but other ships in the convoy. An ammunition ship was the first to go. She went with just one bang. Like a kid’s firecracker on Guy Fawkes’ Day, there was a flash, an explosion, and that was all. There was no survivor—not one. Three more ships fell to the U-boat pack that had found us. These were luckier, as our escort ships did a magnificent job standing to and picking up as many as they could find.

We were moving and had the comfort of our zig-zag to protect us; but hove-to and silhouetted against the skyline as were those little men-of-war—well, it needed little imagination to have some idea of how they felt.

Luckily for us the weather brewed up with evening, and for the rest of the trip it proved to be a friendly sort of enemy that, although damaging our superstructures and making life an uncomfortable buffeting round of bruises and lost meals, effectively protected us from our greater enemy lurking somewhere beneath the surface.

On the seventeenth day the convoy split up, the separate ships breaking off for their different ports of destination. Ours was Brazil, which we made in eight days—twenty-nine days out from Hull.

Three welcome days were spent in Pernambuco while fuel oil and stores were taken aboard, and then we found ourselves routed independently for Cape Town. It was hard on the nerves, that trip across the South Atlantic, and we were all thankful for the eleven knots given us by the ship’s fine lines and powerful new engines.

Once we found ourselves unmolested, and thanking the wisdom of the Lords of the Admiralty in routing us so cleverly, we whooped ashore like a pack of school kids.

We spent many happy hours ashore during the days at the Cape. The popular idea that Jack ashore is Jack rolling drunk is no longer a true one. The majority of us behaved like ordinary folk with a day off in a strange place.

My own special companion for shore-leave there was a young seventeen-year-old apprentice named John Arnold. He was a quiet, well-spoken lad from the south of England, and was forever kidding me about my being a barbarian from the north. It was, though, all good fun, and I took it in the spirit with which it was meant. John would, I knew, hurt no one’s feelings willingly.

He was deeply religious, and at sea would often be seen reading the Bible while other hands were engrossed in paperbacked novels with spicy and often slightly pornographic covers. Quite a few of the lads used to pull his leg unmercifully about his choice of literature, but John never seemed to take offense, any more than he interfered with other people’s lives. I remember once on an earlier voyage one of our shipmates, a twenty-year-old boy named Davies, flung a boot across the forecastle at Little John while he was reading his Bible. The boot struck the lad on the shoulder, but he just glanced up, smiling, and shrugged it off. I never saw John Arnold angry. I know it seems strange to speak so of a seventeen-year-old boy, but John actually radiated goodness and sweetness, or so it seemed to me.

Yes, we were poles apart in outlook, John and I, as good friends so often are. As a child, I had had a good religious upbringing. But as a twenty-seven-year-old sailor, I had no time for religion; I only had time for being a sailor. My life was full enough, I thought. I have found that most men don’t want Christ until they need Him. Little John was very different. I told myself that when I married and had a son I would want him to grow up like John. Our relationship was more like father and son than like two shipmates.

Our stay in Cape Town was brief. The year was 1942, and our desert armies were in desperate need of the cargo we carried. We had 7,000 tons of aircraft engines on board, besides the bombs. Both consignments were of the urgent type. We pressed on.

Up the stifling Red Sea we steamed, refuelled at Port Said, and then on to Alexandria, where we watched our hatches disgorge the high explosives.

Turning round, we sailed through the Indian Ocean to Mauritius, the trip being made easier by mail received at Alexandria. I had letters from my mother and from my girl, Kathleen. I rationed myself with these letters, opening and reading one each day while the supply lasted and then starting at the beginning again.

The only news of note was that Kath had joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and been posted to the Orkneys. This news did not please me. I did not like the idea of my sweetheart being so far from home when I got back, and, knowing how extreme the weather can be so far north, I worried about her a good deal. Summer, however, was well on the way, and consoling myself with that thought I kept cheerful, enduring the terribly hot run to Mauritius, where we picked up 10,000 tons of sugar, some fibre, and 400 tons of rum, destined, I suppose, for our own Royal Navy. Well, I’d seen the Royal Navy at work, God bless ‘em. I for one did not begrudge them the shipping space their Nelson’s Blood demanded.

After Mauritius another call at the Cape for more fuel and we were off again, this time homeward bound.

All hands considered it time, too. Our outward run had taken us half-way round the world; if we could have used Suez and the Mediterranean we would have done it in exactly a fortnight. That was one thing Jerry’s subs were accomplishing, even if they never sank another ship.

Leaving Cape Town, we had received orders to make Walvis Bay and there join convoy with nine other ships. We were thinking ourselves already home by that time. Consequently, the shock of contrary orders came as a severe and very unwelcome one. I was on the bridge with the First Mate’s watch when Sparks, the wireless operator, brought the message. The Mate read it, and handed it to me without a word.

Proceed independently for home port at all speed.

I swore softly. During the past two days the operator had picked up several S O S’s from ships that had gone down uncomfortably close to our present position. I didn’t like it; nor did anyone else, from the Captain to young Stewart, the cabin-boy.

On the evening of the 18th March our plotted position was smack on the angle formed on the chart by nine degrees south and nine degrees west. It had been a glorious day with no wind and an easy swell that seemed too lazy to lift the ship as she hurried home at a round twelve knots. We were proud of this speed on board the Lulworth Hill. To us it seemed very good for a mere tramp, and we looked aft happily at the white wake that streamed astern straight, as if drawn with a giant ruler.

It was six months since we had left home, and, having got so far without incident, most of the hands tried to convince themselves that we were in for an uneventful passage home.

If we could keep an average of a dozen knots, we all realized that our English landfall was not a long time ahead of us. That day all hands had been hard at it painting and cleaning the ship in the traditional manner that demands a smart appearance when arriving at a home port.

It is no joke working hard under an almost vertical sun. We were only nine degrees off the Equator, and after tea most of the crew were taking things easy on deck, chatting, singing, or mending clothes, or just sitting smoking and enjoying the comparative cool of the evening.

I was on the poop, chatting with the Bosun at the time, who was standing by to do his rounds as soon as black-out was ordered. He glanced at the watch, and I heard him muttering something about it being half-past seven and not having much longer to go. Lighting his pipe, he turned and went off aft, where he idly studied the ever-turning log.

I looked at the deep red sun, poised above the western horizon and ready to take its nightly dive behind the sea’s edge. We were only some degrees west of the Orkneys. The time there would be just about the same as in our position. Probably Kath had knocked off work by then. Perhaps even at that minute she was out strolling in those Scottish isles, watching the sun setting over the cold grey North Atlantic. I made a rapid calculation. No. So early in March, I knew, the sun would have set already in such northerly latitudes.

All the same, thoughts of Kathleen persisted, and I found myself hoping that the letter I had posted to her from Cape Town would have reached her in time for her to arrange her leave to coincide with our arrival in England. You want jam on it, I told myself bitterly. You haven’t a hope. You know what overseas mail is like in war-time. It’ll probably get to her just as you’re leaving Hull on your next trip.

I swallowed my cynical forebodings as the Bosun left the taffrail and rolled his way back to me.

The old girl’s making the knots good and proper, he said appreciatively. T’hell with the old square-rigger man’s talk of more day, more dollars. Let’s get home, that’s what I say. Sooner the better—eh, what t’ bloody hell—?

Torpedo on the starboard beam.

The dreaded shout came from one of the duty ship’s gunners. Instantly, almost the whole ship was struck—not by a torpedo, but by panic. I saw the torpedo speeding harmlessly by not thirty feet astern of us. I also saw my shipmates rushing about the decks, blindly, madly; shouting, cursing, screaming, crying, they crashed into each other, bounced off, only to careen stupidly into someone else. I even saw friends lashing out at each other in their fear. To a sailor, a torpedo is a terrible thing, but panic on a ship is worse. Panic is the most ugly, the most brutal sight I have ever seen.

The crew of one of our guns pulled themselves together and came into action. As I reached my station, I saw that a U-boat had surfaced not 200 yards off our starboard beam. The very shortness of the range had put the gunner off his stroke, and our first shell passed a good ten feet above the conning tower, sending up a spurt of spray as it struck the water beyond.

The next shot was better, but failed to explode. It was, however, a remarkably near miss, and if ever anyone could plumb those terrific depths to recover that shell, I am positive that they would see the marks of a U-boat’s paint on it.

Jerry wasn’t the sort of man to hang around while our gunners tried their skill on his craft. Before a third shot could be fired he made a crash-dive and disappeared in a smother of white water and foam.

Our Captain then gave the order for more speed—an order that to this day I consider wrong, an order that was perhaps the result of fear and confusion and strain. For propped on our stern, in position ready to be fired, were enough depth charges to have blown that submarine right out of the water. If the order had been to come about, we could have reached the spot where the U-boat had submerged, dropped our pattern of depth charges and sunk or damaged it.

Looking back on it now, I see it would have been our only chance. But the order was to run for it, and we ran. Thirteen knots was held and passed until the old girl was rattling her bones between thirteen and fourteen sea miles to the hour. And zig-zagging at that. Our ship was no sweetly lined destroyer, but a good solid ship built for haulage. Her bows sent two waves stretching outwards from her in the form of a V, and behind us the stern-wave lumped like a willow pattern. When she turned on an end of a zig-zag she heeled over until it was difficult to keep a footing on her decks.

Men were still rushing to and from their quarters in a most unseamanlike confusion, some changing into their best suits, others into rougher but warmer clothing. Some if not all were making hurried trips to their station lifeboat, depositing things of value that might not easily be found in the confusion caused should we be struck by a tin fish or shelled out of our ship. I remember hurrying to my cabin to fill a suitcase with the presents I had bought to take home. Indiscriminately I laid my hands on all the matches and packets of fags I could find. Some were my own and some belonged to the Bosun, but I was not worrying. We were