Free The Lion at Sea by Max Hennessy

rumours. Spies were said to have been shot already, and butchers behind the town to have killed off so many animals for rations they’d sunk down exhausted in the sea of blood they had themselves created.
    A sub-lieutenant in a sporting check suit and a brown bowler hat appeared.
    ‘On my way to join Lion ,’ he announced. ‘I’ve come straight from Goodwood and I haven’t the faintest idea where my uniform is.’
    Kelly returned on board, certain by now that war was just over the horizon. Fanshawe met him. ‘The Germans have demanded free passage for their troops through Belgium,’ he said. ‘And the Belgians have refused, and appealed to us to uphold their neutrality. I gather we’ve presented an ultimatum to the Kaiser. That means we’re in, because they won’t draw back now.’
    On the quarter deck, Captain Everley was complaining to the Commander about the officer of the watch. In the panic, he had recalled the liberty boat too soon because of a signal that all ships’ boats had to be out of the water by 8 p.m., and had left the captain’s steward on the quay.
    ‘There are twelve hundred lieutenants on the Navy List,’ Everley was saying in his gloomy voice. ‘That makes ’em two a penny. But in the course of God knows how long at sea, I’ve only met one good steward – mine – and he’s been left ashore.’
    The captain’s secretary refused to give anything away, despite the fact that they all knew war was probably only hours away, and the next day everything that remained of a combustible nature which could be done without followed the boats and the woodwork ashore.
    ‘Are we to strip the cabins, sir?’ Kelly asked. ‘I’ve heard that Raleigh ’sremoving the corticene from the messdeck.’
    ‘Raleigh’s a blood-and-iron ship,’ the First Lieutenant said. ‘We’ll leave the corticene.’ He gave a sudden smile. ‘We might even get a few comfortable armchairs back on board, in fact, so that later we don’t have to have a whip round to purchase some more.’
    More ships turned up and the long summer afternoon of August 4th, 1914, was spent waiting for the British ultimatum to expire. A signal had already been received, stating that it was due to terminate at midnight and in the early evening another signal arrived: ‘Admiralty to all ships. The war telegram will be issued at midnight authorising you to commence hostilities against Germany.’
    With its receipt the panic stopped. There was a strange calm everywhere now. All the decisions had been taken and now they could only wait.
    ‘Ours not to reason why,’ Fanshawe said. ‘Ours but to do and die.’
    ‘Forty-eight hours from now,’ Kelly pointed out, ‘we’ll probably be dying like billy-o.’
    He was keeping the first watch, from eight to midnight. It was hot and all the scuttles were wide open. But everybody seemed restless and the ship was humming with life.
    The auxiliary machinery was whining and the ventilating fans provided background noise to the sound of a train squealing in the dock station and the marine sentry rattling his rifle butt on the concrete by the gangway. Cooking smells from the officers’ galley added flavour to the smell of oil, steam and that curious extra acrid odour that was peculiar to marine machinery. From ashore he could hear the sound of the crowds coming on the still air. The streets were full, as though everyone was uneasy and waiting like the Fleet, and faintly he heard the low tones of God Save The King as some group in an access of patriotic emotion began to sing. Then he heard the chimes of a church clock coming over the water and turned to Fanshawe who had relieved him.
    ‘That’s it, then! We’re in!’
    When he came on watch again at 4 a.m., Fanshawe said in matter-of-fact tones, ‘We had a signal at 1.27 a.m., ordering us to commence hostile acts against Germany.’
    ‘And did we?’
    ‘Any moment now.’
    As Fanshawe disappeared, Kelly found himself staring at the increasing