Free HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) by Nicholas Monsarrat Page B

worse we’ll have to turn directly into it, and slow down.’
    It did get worse, in the next hour he spent in his chair, and when the first wave, breaking right over the bows, splashed the fo’c’sle itself, he rang the bell to the engine room. Chief himself answered.
    ‘I’ll have to take the revs off, Chief, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘It’s getting too lively altogether. What are they now?’
    ‘Thirty-five, sir.’
    ‘Make that twenty. Have you got a hand on the bulkhead?’
    ‘No, sir. I’ll put one on.’
    ‘Right.’ He turned to the wheelhouse voice-pipe. ‘Steer south, twenty-five east, Adams. And tell me if she’s losing steerage way. I want to keep the wind dead ahead.’
    ‘Aye, aye, sir.’
    The alteration, and the decrease in speed, served them well for an hour: then it suddenly seemed to lose its effect, and their movements became thoroughly strained and awkward. He decreased speed again, to fifteen revolutions – bare steerage way – but still the awkwardness and the distress persisted: it became a steady thumping as each wave hit them, a recurrent lift-and-crunch which might have been specially designed to threaten their weakest point. It was now blowing steadily and strongly from the south: he listened to the wind rising with a murderous attention. At about half past three it backed suddenly to the south-east, and he followed it: it meant they were heading for home again – the sole good point in a situation rapidly deteriorating. He looked at the seas running swiftly past them, and felt the ones breaking at the bows, and he knew that all their advantage was ebbing away from them. This was how it had been when he had been ready to abandon ship, three nights ago; it was this that was going to destroy them.
    Quick steps rang on the bridge ladder, and he turned. It was the Chief: in the failing light his face looked grey and defeated.
    ‘That bulkhead can’t take this, sir,’ he began immediately. ‘I’ve been in to have a look, and it’s started working again – there’s the same leak down that seam. We’ll have to stop.’
    The Captain shook his head. ‘That’s no good, Chief. If we stop in this sea, we’ll just bang ourselves to bits.’ A big wave hit them as he spoke, breaking down on the bows, driving them under. Marlborough came up from it very slowly indeed. ‘We’ve got to keep head to wind, at all costs.’
    ‘Can we go any slower, sir?’
    ‘No. She’ll barely steer as it is.’
    Another wave took them fair and square on the fo’c’sle, sweeping along the upper deck as Marlborough sagged into the trough. The wind tugged at them. It was as if the deathbed scene were starting all over again.
    The Chief looked swiftly at the Captain. ‘Could we go astern into it?’
    ‘Probably pull the bows off, Chief.’
    ‘Better than this, sir. This is just murder.’
    ‘Yes … All right … She may not come round.’ He leant over to the voice-pipe. ‘Stop starboard.’
    ‘Stop starboard, sir.’ The telegraph clanged.
    ‘Adams, I’m going astern, and up into the wind stern first. Put the wheel over hard a-starboard.’
    ‘Hard a-starboard, sir.’
    ‘Slow astern starboard.’
    The bell clanged again. ‘Starboard engine slow astern, wheel hard a-starboard, sir.’
    ‘Very good.’
    They waited. Those few minutes before Marlborough gathered stern way were horrible. She seemed to be standing in the jaws of the wind and sea, mutely undergoing a wild torture. She came down upon one wave with so solid a crash that it seemed impossible that the whole bows should not be wrenched off: a second, with a cruelty and malice almost deliberate, hit them a treacherous slewing blow on the port side. Slowly Marlborough backed away, shaking and staggering as if from a mortal thrust. The compass faltered, and started very slowly to turn: then as the wind caught the bows she began to swing sharply. He called out: ‘Watch it, Adams! Meet her! Bring her head on to north-west,’ and his