The Dangerous Years Read Free

many times before, in the dark, past bell and buoy, in fog and under the pale northern stars, clearing for action as they went, as they were cleared now, still prepared to do battle if the Germans decided on a Wagnerian gesture of self-immolation. Every ship in the Royal Navy that could be spared was there – from Dover, Harwich, Scapa and the Channel – three hundred and seventy of them and ninety thousand men, every ship flying as many white ensigns as possible as if they were going into action. Each column consisted of over thirty battleships, battle cruisers and cruisers, with a destroyer abreast each flagship. Heading the line was Beatty’s Queen Elizabeth , wearing the flag the admiral had flown in Lion during the Battle of Jutland.
    As the light increased the air seemed to grow cooler. The water, invisible during the night, now became long cold lines of grey movement, and the black loom of ships merged into the pale wash of day. There would be sixty-nine of the Germans, they’d heard – two of them missing because one had engine trouble and another had struck a mine – humiliated ships run by committees of sailors who claimed kinship with the International Proletariat and said they were the brothers of the mutinous men of the Russian Navy. They’d long since lost their fighting potential, because they’d been drained of their best men for the submarines and destroyers, and when the officers had wished to take them to sea in a last desperate attack, the desire for peace had erupted in a revolution and officers had had to escape in cars, on bicycles and on foot to avoid arrest. When Königsberg had brought senior naval officers to discuss the terms of surrender they had been accompanied by sailors claiming their admirals were only advisers. Their humiliated officers had had the satisfaction of seeing them told to go to hell.
    ‘Here they are!’
    Smoke had appeared on the horizon, then one after the other, they began to pick out the masts and upperworks of the German ships; grey shapes still, but menacing in their blunt outlines. Kelly drew a deep breath. The last time he’d seen these ships, he’d come away from the encounter with a livid wound across his back, a flap of flesh hanging over his eye, a fractured cheekbone and the danger of losing his sight. Wellbeloved was on the deck below him and he saw him also catch at his breath.
    ‘Friedrich der Grosse leading,’ Kelly pointed out flatly, recognising the outlines he’d been studying in books through four long years. ‘I can also see Seydlitz, Moltke, Derfflinger, Hindenburg and Von Der Tann.’
    Orrmont turned. ‘How do they look, Number One?’
    ‘A lot tamer than when I last saw them, sir.’
    ‘Bring a lump to your throat?’
    ‘More like a flutter to the heart, sir.’
    ‘Well, you never know. We might still have to sink them. It needs only one chance shot to start the whole thing again.’
    Silently, like grey ghosts, the outriders of the two fleets met. In gas masks, asbestos flame helmets, gauntlets and breast shields, the allied crews waited at action stations. But there was no hostility. The Germans were demoralised and they were coming without heroics. As they passed through the line of destroyers Kelly was aware of a deep depression and the aftermath of tension. Had they been held in check all these months by an error of judgement? Had they been deterred only by a myth? Had the threat they’d believed in been merely imaginary?
    As the Germans approached, the men crowded the main deck and the spaces round the funnels and the gun platforms, pushing among the torpedo tubes and clinging to the boats for a better view. Every ship was stationed on a pre-selected enemy vessel, her guns trained across the narrow stretch of water. On the deck of the ship ahead of Mordant film makers were recording the scene, and the German sailors, scowling at the levelled cameras, mimicked the movements of the men cranking the handles and wigwagged unprintable