Convoy (A World War 2 Naval Adventure)

By J.E. Macdonnell

Fletcher staggered to the edge of the bridge. In front of their careering bow the freighter that had been loaded with ammunition had dissolved under the torpedo’s persuasion into a sky-flung wall of black smoke.
He heard Brinkworth’s order to straighten her up and he knew that the captain was taking the only course left open to him in that packed mass of ships—he was driving her straight down between the lines towards the rear of the convoy.
He knew, too, what they could expect once they broke clear of the rear of the convoy, once they were free of those protecting hulls on either side. The deadly pack was closing in on its prey ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Jul 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224300518

J.E. Macdonnell

JAMES EDMOND MACDONNELL was born in 1917 in Mackay, Queensland and became one of Australia’s most prolific writers. As a boy, he became determined to go to sea and read every seafaring book he could find. At age 13, while his family was still asleep, he took his brother’s bike and rode eighty miles from his home town to Brisbane in an attempt to see ships and the sea. Fortunately, he was found and returned to his family. He attended the Toowoomba Grammar School from 1931 to 1932. He served in the Royal Australian Navy for fourteen years, joining at age 17, advancing through all lower deck ranks and reaching the rank of commissioned gunnery officer. He began writing books while still in active service.Macdonnell wrote stories for The Bulletin under the pseudonym “Macnell” and from 1948 to 1956 he was a member of The Bulletin staff. His first book, Fleet Destroyer – a collection of stories about life on the small ships – was published by The Book Depot, Melbourne, in 1945. Macdonnell began writing full-time for Horwitz in 1956, writing an average of a dozen books a year.After leaving the navy, Macdonnell lived in St. Ives, Sydney and pursued his writing career. In 1988, he retired to Buderim on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. He died peacefully in his sleep at a Buderim hospital in 2002. He is survived by his children Beth, Jane and Peter.Macdonnell’s naval stories feature several recurring characters – Captain “Dutchy” Holland, D.S.O., Captain Peter Bentley, V.C., Captain Bruce Sainsbury, V.C., Jim Brady, and Lieutenant Commander Robert Randall.

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Fletcher staggered to the edge of the bridge. In front of their careering bow the freighter that had been loaded with ammunition had dissolved under the torpedo’s persuasion into a sky-flung wall of black smoke.

He heard Brinkworth’s order to straighten her up and he knew that the captain was taking the only course left open to him in that packed mass of ships—he was driving her straight down between the lines towards the rear of the convoy.

He knew, too, what they could expect once they broke clear of the rear of the convoy, once they were free of those protecting hulls on either side. The deadly pack was closing in on its prey ...

J E MACDONNELL 24: CONVOY

By J E Macdonnell

First published by Horwitz Publications in 1960

©1960, 2024 by J E Macdonnell

First Electronic Edition: July 2024

Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate

Series Editor: Janet Whitehead

Text © Piccadilly Publishing

Visit www.piccadillypublishing.org to read more about our books.

Chapter One

ALL DAY THE convoy had rolled, lifted and scended across the Atlantic: point of departure Halifax, landfall Liverpool.

There were twenty-five ships, apart from the escort, but because some ships were smaller than others, they all fitted into three parallel lines of equal length.

The phony war in Europe was over: it had exploded into the blitzkriegs of Holland, Belgium and the near-catastrophe of Dunkirk. At sea the U-boat menace had not yet reached its strangling peak, but the attacks were becoming fiercer and more efficient. The time of the pack attacks was not far distant.

Because of this, because the pulse of England’s lifeline was beating irregularly under the throttling of submarine torpedoes, every available ship had been pressed into service.

The convoy was composed of ships of all classes and breeds. There were one or two class-conscious liners, graceful tall ships, fast, and now held down to the mean speed of ten knots. Six months earlier they would have been sailed across on their own, but not now.

There were strongly-built cargo vessels, the lords of their class, keeping station on smutty little tramps which were strangers to Southampton and Marseilles, but whose rusty shoulders had rubbed familiarly against the piers of Diego Suarez and Haifa, Chittagong and Mombasa.

There were some in-betweeners, cargo ships spacious enough to carry passengers, and some old but solid freighters. And, placed in the centre of the steadily-moving mass, the middle ship of the centre line, an oil-tanker.

But the differences of class and speed and grace were superficial. The whole mass was integrated, levelled, by two comprehensive denominators—every ship was crammed with war supplies, and they were all in danger.

There was close on half a million tons of shipping in that noncombatant armada, and the list of supplies it loaded was a quartermaster’s dream—or nightmare.

There were bags of rice and boxes of Bofors shells; tins of milk and treads for tanks disabled in the Desert; parachutes for pilots and engines for their planes; needles, Bren-gun carriers, bombs, writing pads, searchlights, cases of toothpaste, anti-aircraft guns and their mountings. And, in the middle ship of the centre line, hundreds of tons of fuel-oil for the Navy and thousands of drums of high-octane petrol for the Air Force.

An hour before, at four o’clock, the convoy had sailed across the thirtieth meridian of longitude. In their long voyage this crossing was of no special navigational significance; but it meant that they were more than halfway across the Atlantic, and well within the cruising range of Europe-based U-boats.

But the men of the convoy did not need a fixed vertical line on a chart to tell them that. The day before, at about this time, a little before dusk, a single roaming submarine had picked off the rear ship of the northward line.

Two destroyers of the escort had immediately turned about and raced back. They sniffed around the bearing of the torpedo-track and then they made a noisy fuss with depth-charges. But the U-boat had cleared for its life as soon as its messenger had left the tube, and it had all the Atlantic to play in.

It had sent one ship to the cold bottom, but it had gained something of much greater value to the Reich—the composition, the course, the position and speed of the convoy.

So this day now drawing to its end had been one of anxiety and tension for the men manning those unarmoured and priceless ships. There had been time for the pack to gather, and now was the time, with darkness at hand, for the teeth of the wolves to snap and tear.

It would be safe to claim that all those men who knowingly sailed out into that cold and dangerous ocean in practically defenceless ships were brave. The men aboard the tanker were doubly so.

They knew, those seamen and oilers, what attention they held for a periscopic eye. Early night was the favourite time for U-boat attack. Periscopes would be invisible, even a surfaced hull; while the tall-sided ships would be still nicely silhouetted against the light lingering in the sky. But the tanker’s danger was greatest.

England could be crammed from end to end with aircraft and tanks. That offensive potentiality would be effectively negatived if the tanker’s load could be made to gush from her ruptured sides a thousand fathoms down.

She was attractive in another way. The lurid light from her burning cargo would not endanger much a thin periscope standard, but it would glare beautifully and helpfully upon the rest of the convoy.

Captain Brinkworth was, of course, fully aware of these extra nautical potentialities of his vessel, and now, as always, he thrust the thought of them resolutely from his tired mind.

He stood on his bridge with his feet braced apart. The tanker was fully loaded, with her well-decks washed now and then by an encroaching sea, and her heaviness made her ride well into the waves, so that he had no real need to brace himself.

But he stood like that, legs straddled, in a hotel bar. The stance of thirty years’ experience is hard to alter.

He stared out over the pipe-cluttered deck, out past the bow to the grey sea ahead of the ships in the van, and the years of his experience sat visibly on his face.

A good face, not handsome, but calm and strong, the skin weathered into toughness, the sort of face you would trust at once: stamped with surety of decision and motive, lacking the pettiness of lesser occupations, a face which every day in thirty years of sea-time had been confronted by significant, sometimes dangerous, events.

Those were the impressions you received—calmness, strength, authority. Physically, the face was, if not carved out of granite, then blocky, rugged: deep-set, steady seaman’s eyes, a large nose, a stump of a paw. He was not tall, but squally broad, and at fifty-two obviously retained a good deal of the strength founded by a vigorous youth.

His voice when he spoke was like the man—direct and vibrant: direct because no shilly-shallier ever rose to command of a ship, and vibrant because it had for a lifetime contended against the opposition of loud-voiced winds.

Tonight will tell, Mister. If they don’t take us on tonight then there’s none of them within range.

Yes, captain, the mate answered.

He was Brinkworth’s second-in-command, and he was as different physically as his American nationality was to the Britisher’s. Tall and lean, thin almost, he reached three inches above the captain, and his face had the same characteristics of fineness. But the composure and authority were there, in identical measure.

Brinkworth turned his head slightly and his eyes lifted to his companion’s face. His glance was quizzical, not condemnatory.

Mr. Fletcher, he said, almost reflectively, you have been with us close on a fortnight now.

His eyes trained again to the sea. The mate flicked a look at him, a cautious, alert glance.

That’s right, captain, he answered, and his voice held an upward, waiting intonation.

Your papers and your references, the captain went on, are of the highest standard. I am pleased to be able to say that your qualifications are not overstated. Your work both in Halifax and at sea has been completely satisfactory. I am also pleased to have an American sailing with us. It makes the newspaper stories of joint effort, hands across the ocean sort of thing, seem to come alive, factual evidence you might say.

Yes, captain, Fletcher murmured, keeping his face solemn. Even though he had become used to the captain’s correct, almost pedantic, method of delivery, he still felt like smiling when he heard it. The fellow had sounded like a parson when he had greeted him in Halifax, but Fletcher had been more than long enough at sea to appreciate the power of command of the man, and to realise the efficiency with which he ran this big oil carrier.

So, Mr. Fletcher, I feel that sufficient time has passed for me to take the liberty of correcting you in one of your—ah—national characteristics.

The tone was formal, but the glance was still quizzical, tolerant. Fletcher smiled slightly.

And what might that be, captain? he asked.

Precisely what you just said, Mister.

Eh? I mean ... I beg your pardon?

Another month of this, Fletcher grinned to himself, and I’ll qualify for a stall in Westminster Abbey!

It was the most national thing he could think of. Like Brooklyn Bridge ...

I appreciate, Mr. Fletcher, the differences in the seagoing services of our two countries. But permit me to inform you that in the British Mercantile Marine the master of a vessel is not referred to continually as ‘captain.’

Oh? That is a new one on me, captain. What the hell is he called then?

He is, Brinkworth said gently, referred to as ‘sir.’

I see, Fletcher smiled, and was conscious of the relief he felt—you never knew with these touchy Limeys. Okay then—from now on in it’ll be ‘Aye, aye, sir!’

Hardly, Mr. Fletcher. That particular expression is reserved for naval use.

Okay. Just plain ‘sir.’

Precisely, Mr. Fletcher. Now, if you please, I would like you to go round the ship and check our darken-ship arrangements. Lights attract mosquitoes, Mr. Fletcher.

Mr. Fletcher had some doubts about the entomological accuracy of that statement, but none as to what the captain meant.

Yes, sir, he acknowledged, and walked out of the wheelhouse. The captain watched him go with his leathery face composed and a small smile in his eyes.

Fletcher walked round the ship, and as he checked deadlights down over portholes and canvas darken-ship screens in place, his mind was exercised by that little exchange on the bridge.

From there his thoughts went back naturally and easily to the manner of his joining this British ship, and of his first meeting with her captain.

The original first mate of the Stanvac Star had been carried ashore in Halifax with a perforated ulcer, the result of hastily-eaten food on a tensed, acidy stomach. Fletcher had been in Halifax, fresh out of a berth, and had seen the stretcher coming ashore.

A casual enquiry of one of the tanker’s seamen had put him in the picture. The idea already stirring in his head, he had looked the ship over from the wharf. She was big, and clean, and as soon as those huge pipes had drunk their fill she would be going back to a war he had so far only read about.

He was young, he was unmarried, he was adventurous, like most of his breed. But none of these equations had finally decided him. He was, temporarily, out of a job. He walked up the gangway and made his way to the captain’s cabin.

The situation—a British ship in a foreign port in wartime, minus a first mate—was unusual: and what she was sailing into called for unusual correction of the situation. It had taken Brinkworth a little more than five minutes to give the applicant the job.

Fletcher had often wondered about that in the ensuing fortnight. He had been prepared to argue his case, but this stern parson of a man had merely read his papers, and then had looked at him with a penetrating stare.

What he did not know was that Brinkworth could judge a man as precisely as he could navigate, and that he had liked the clean, open look of this American. The captain had asked no questions about wanting to fight the good fight, defending the Motherland, any of that crap. He had asked, simply and directly: Why do you want this job?

Fletcher had answered with the same brevity: Because at the moment I haven’t got one.

Now he was first mate of a British tanker, in convoy bound for Liverpool, surrounded by men whose speech and manners were so different to his own. There had been some references in the messroom to Yanks, and dames, the usual inoffensive slights cast at his race, and then he had been accepted. It occurred to him that these tired-looking men were faced with dangers too significant and real to worry about anything but a shipmate’s professional competence.

He had proved his competence easily enough—shipping out from the oil ports of the Gulf of Mexico had based his efficiency solidly. Now, as he headed back to the bridge, he thought again of Brinkworth’s odd mixture of voice and appearance. Somehow, the contrast—pedantic speech and rugged authority—was oddly comforting.

He had